 
Tetsua
Member
Username: Tetsua
Post Number: 1378
Registered: 01-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 11:03 am: |    |
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs .dll/article?AID=/20071216/NEW S01/71215003 |
Rjk
Member
Username: Rjk
Post Number: 989
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 11:32 am: | |
My grandmother lived on the section of Miller Street covered in the video. She moved there is the early to mid 30's and stayed there for almost 50 years. She attended Resurrection church on the other side of Mt. Elliott.
Up until a few years ago I use to drive down Miller until my grandmothers place was torn down.
It was one of the last houses in that area still standing. |
Gsgeorge
Member
Username: Gsgeorge
Post Number: 460
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 3:07 pm: | |
I just watched every one. While it takes the usual freep's "outsider's perpective" of the city (the reporter seems somewhat surprised to find Detroit the way it is!) I found the videos and the people in them fascinating. |
Fareastsider
Member
Username: Fareastsider
Post Number: 724
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 3:33 pm: | |
The two page map opening in the paper is quite interesting. I think he did a good job. |
Rhymeswithrawk
Member
Username: Rhymeswithrawk
Post Number: 1071
Registered: 11-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 5:49 pm: | |
"Outsider's perspective," Gsgeorge?
"I have covered Detroit for 35 years and lived in it or next to it for virtually my entire life."
Sounds insider to me. If you've read the Free Press' "Detroit Almanac," I find it hard to believe you think you know more about the city than he does. I don't think he was surprised to see good and bad; I think it was driving down streets even he hadn't been down before that led to surprises good and bad. I mean, until you've been EVERYWHERE in the city, in McGraw's case, all 2,700 miles of it ... |
401don
Member
Username: 401don
Post Number: 156
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 6:07 pm: | |
It makes you wonder if something can't be done with all those large swaths of land. I used to think urban farming was kind of off-the-wall but you really have enough land in some areas to start "rural" farming. Of course, what's under that land may pose a problem. |
Rhymeswithrawk
Member
Username: Rhymeswithrawk
Post Number: 1075
Registered: 11-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 6:10 pm: | |
I think the only viable option is to return huge swaths of such neighborhoods to the earth. Turn them into green space. The problem is if you use imminent domain to buy out the last person on a block, they might get only $10K for their house. How are they going to find a place to live for what they'd get in compensation? |
Elviswithteeth
Member
Username: Elviswithteeth
Post Number: 51
Registered: 03-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 6:16 pm: | |
Bill did a great job that was not biased via Mega-Media for it was truthful on the condition on the "Real" Detroit which exists today. This view is a must for the typical "North Eight Mile Dweller"! |
401don
Member
Username: 401don
Post Number: 158
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 6:24 pm: | |
Rhymes, I'm wondering what you mean by greenspace. The city can't afford to maintain it as parkland. Should it be forested, perhaps with nature paths? Should the land be leased to the state Natural Resources Dept? I think the biggest concern about leaving it alone is that it all becomes a dumping ground. |
Gsgeorge
Member
Username: Gsgeorge
Post Number: 462
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 6:25 pm: | |
Rhymeswith, of course I haven't been on all 2,700 miles of Detroit's streets. And McGraw captured something really special about the city. I just meant that it reads much more like an outsider's travelogue rather than an insider's portrait of the city. But I think the videos will be eye-opening for Detroiters and suburbanites alike. |
Gsgeorge
Member
Username: Gsgeorge
Post Number: 463
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 6:28 pm: | |
ps-- I'm a big proponent of urban farming, but it would require a lot of decontamination of the former residential and industrial areas. |
Barnesfoto
Member
Username: Barnesfoto
Post Number: 4567
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 8:59 pm: | |
Good project- There's still a bit of life in that paper now and then. I get irritated by the regular mistakes in Detroit geography that some of the writers make-obviously writers who have never lived in the city. But then they do an old fashioned in-depth project like this and it makes up for seeing articles mentioning the "intersection of Schoolcraft and Fenkell". |
Tetsua
Member
Username: Tetsua
Post Number: 1379
Registered: 01-2004
| | Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 - 9:37 am: | |
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs .dll/article?AID=/20071217/NEW S05/712170328
Looks like it's a 5 part segment |
Gannon
Member
Username: Gannon
Post Number: 11136
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 - 10:08 am: | |
quote:The problem is if you use imminent domain to buy out the last person on a block, they might get only $10K for their house. How are they going to find a place to live for what they'd get in compensation?
You DON'T give them cash, you get them another house with similar-to-better property, as close to the fire and police stations as possible to condense drive ranges for each.
Remediation efforts should be started on all greenspace land anyways, there is evidence that the lead levels are ubiquitously high throughout the city.
Hate to say it, but we should probably let the grass grow everywhere...save on the cutting costs like they did this year...then have a series of controlled burns...maybe just before Angel's Night...to appease the pyro's collective firelust and perhaps learn beforehand which water lines reach where after another year freeze/thaw and other potential pipe/hydrant problems. Gotta put that 'activated carbon' into the ground...and it would be nice to, ahem, test our irrigation system.
Every coffeehouse should be required to recycle their grounds into the remediation effort, too.
No, I've never herded cats, but I've heard it can be fun. |
Iheartthed
Member
Username: Iheartthed
Post Number: 2380
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 - 10:29 am: | |
Let the city convert the abandoned spaces to green space? Well, okay... but that hardly does anything to solve the problem.
quote:George Galster lives in Palmer Woods. He's also an expert on neighborhoods and has a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a professor at Wayne State University.
Galster said the housing crisis hitting Detroit in 2007 is "fundamentally different" from the long-term problem, which has occurred mostly in marginal areas of the city and which he attributes to metro Detroit building more housing units over the years than it can fill.
It's a regional problem, but Detroit's older housing stock bears the brunt of it, and the city is powerless to control the situation, Galster said.
He added: "It's like playing a game of musical chairs in reverse."
Instead of taking away chairs -- or houses -- "we keep adding chairs, so there's a whole lot of chairs that people are not sitting in at the end of each round."
Historically, the least desirable houses are the ones that nobody is living in. After the owner can't find anyone to rent or buy the house, he or she often simply walks away from it.
What's different now, Galster said, is that for the past couple of years "we're seeing the abandonment of some of the city's most desirable housing."
So in 20 years to we convert Palmer Woods, North Rosedale Park, etc. into green space as well? |
Gannon
Member
Username: Gannon
Post Number: 11139
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 - 10:52 am: | |
We either make it on purpose in limited areas, OR we let it all decay by itself without containment. |
Royce
Member
Username: Royce
Post Number: 2458
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 - 11:52 am: | |
I mentioned a few weeks ago about Detroit being full of catch-22s, and that these catch-22s keep the city from prospering. One catch-22 deals with abandoned buildings. If the owner can't keep up his or her property because they don't have the money to do so, then how is any kind of fine by the city going to force them to do so?
It can't. So then the city takes over the property, because the owner abandons it, and the city is forced to maintain it, but then the city can't maintain it themselves so they tear it down, while the city's lawyers try to get the former owner of this property to pay back taxes.
Despite the legal battle to get the back taxes, the city is stuck with an abandoned property(now a vacant lot) that it has to maintain through the cutting of grass. Now, multiply this scenario 70,000 times(the number of vacant or abandoned houses/lots) and you see the catch-22 Detroit faces.
Solutions to Detroit's problems are going to hurt someone, whether it's taking property from property owners by eminent domain or reducing or cutting off city services in blighted areas where a few residents remain. The choices will be hard and painful, and no politician thinking about his/her career seems willing to make those choices. As a result, the decline of Detroit will continue. |
Cman710
Member
Username: Cman710
Post Number: 394
Registered: 07-2006
| | Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 - 12:35 pm: | |
This slideshow (picture 9 of 9) identifies the Wayne County building as the "old city hall." Click the "captions" link to see the incorrect caption.
I am not from Detroit and have only been there once, and I know that the old City Hall was demolished in the sixties. You would think editors at the Detroit Free Press would as well.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs .dll/article?AID=/20071216/NEW S01/71216002 |
Detroithabitater
Member
Username: Detroithabitater
Post Number: 90
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 - 12:50 pm: | |
Before it was mentioned that Youngstown Ohio is planning on returning residential to greenspace. I wonder if there is an update from those activities.
It sure would reduce infrastructure and encourage higher density neighborhoods.
One of the ironies though is that the city is trying to sell off it's smaller parks and those chunks out of rouge park. |
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