A successful smaller city

I've finished the book Reimagining Detroit by John Gallagher. The author is a journalist for the Detroit Free Press, though the book is independent of the paper. Gallagher writes about how Detroit might be a successful city of about a half million rather than dismal place yearning to be a city of nearly two million, which was the population in the 1950s.

Success, or quality of life, is not dependent on size. It is possible to be a small successful city. Youngstown is working on it. Turin, Italy is coming out pretty good. But, at the moment, Detroit is impoverished and has huge vacant areas. And, compared to Youngstown and other big cities, Detroit's government is dysfunctional.

On reason why Detroit is a mess is because it is, "a pauper confirmed in the ways of a millionaire." The auto industry made Detroit fabulously rich. That included the union workers for both car companies and city, creating a solid middle class. The wealth also changed how city officials thought. Alas, many people think the region is entitled to wealth that isn't there anymore.

Another big issue in the city is the ineffective city government. To fill the void, lots of community foundations and neighborhood associations have sprung up. Alas, there is lots of bickering between the city and foundations, sometimes more than one, over who has authority over a situation.

On to solutions.

Urban Agriculture allows a community to supplement its food and frequently provides a way of building up the community. It also boosts locally available food, cutting down transportation costs. Work is already underway and many urban gardens are quite successful. Alas, there are issues. Farms are in legal limbo right now -- not exactly legal, but with so much vacant land, the city probably won't bother farmers. There needs to be city ordinances to confirm the practice. Other issues are soil contamination (perhaps asbestos, or worse, from the demolished house), workers willing to do the labor, and a suspicion of corporation size farms. The final issue is that the vastness of the vacant land means urban farming can't be the whole solution.

Detroit's major avenues could go on a Road Diet. Detroit is designed with big roads -- Michigan, Grand River, Woodward, Gratiot -- as "spokes of a wheel" radiating out from downtown. After WWII Detroit widened all of them to 9 lanes, 3 in each direction, one for turning and two for parking. These grand avenues proved to be great for one thing -- allowing residents to flee to the suburbs. These roads aren't used as much anymore and can be quite intimidating for pedestrians wanting to get from one side to the other (even without much traffic). That huge width can be divided up for bike lanes, landscaped medians, and trolley lines. In addition, traffic roundabouts improve safety with a lot less cost for signals.

Detroit has numerous streams that were channeled and covered over (some of this work started in the early 1800s). Buried streams, which were used as sewers, didn't stink so much. But buried streams contribute to high ground water levels and lots of wet basements. Soggy basements contribute to a shorter lifespan for the buildings above them. Many of these streams should be Daylighted and turned into a natural feature, an asset to the community. Lots of homeowners prize waterfront property. It would also help to heal the environment. Alas, the process is highly complicated, requiring a long list of experts in soil, water, plants, engineering, and urban planning.

Though agriculture can't fill all the vacant land, Gallagher offers many other ideas to use it. These include making a vacant lot look nice (keep the grass mown, add a fence), turning lots into pocket parks, linking lots into greenways and bike trails, install geothermal wells for the surrounding buildings, adding art, and building up the urban forest. What's good for wildlife is good for us.

We don't have to (and we can't) wait for the big corporations to revive the economy. Ford won't be employing the thousands it did in the 1950s and Google, in spite of its size, won't be coming to the rescue. However, there are ways to boost job growth. Much of that centers on convincing locals to create their own jobs. High Tech Incubators offer a way for entrepreneurs to get off the ground without a lot of expense and Tech Town is doing a good job of that. Employee owned businesses make decisions quite differently than corporations that sell stock. They benefit the employees and the community instead of the shareholders. These employee owned companies can also band together into cooperatives for improved economic power. Social Enterprises are nonprofit ventures that sell a product to fund some type of community outreach. An example is a Ben & Jerry's ice cream shop downtown that gives at-risk teens their first training in holding a job.

Flint and Genesee County, a poor city not all that far from Detroit, has created a County Land Bank. It owns land throughout the county that has been foreclosed due to unpaid taxes. Instead of selling parcels at auction the suburban parcels are sold through normal real estate agents at market rates. That money is used to improve the city parcels to make them more attractive to buyers. This has been quite successful for Genesee County. Alas, it hasn't transferred to Detroit. One of the few powers the City Council had was to approve the sale of city-owned land and, by golly, they were going to wield that power, discussing every last parcel, no matter how small it was or how long it took. After much convincing, they did create a land bank, but refused to allow it to be linked to a county-wide system. Alas, there are few high value properties within the city that can fund the improvement of the vast numbers of poor properties that, in their current state, nobody wants.

Lots to do. Let's get busy.