rockandhill, the city of detroit never existed as six square miles. when it was first founded it was a collection of ribbon farms that extended a mile north from the river. do you even understand the area of the map you are citing? it is huge.
aside from the self-loathing which is the true mark of a native detroiter, the substance of your posts makes me think you've never actually lived here or have only viewed the area from a purely academic lens, i.e. you have nothing really to offer here. be off to your trout fishing, sonny.
my lack of self-loathing obviously betrays the fact that i am not a native detroiter. but, in addition to living in michigan, i've also lived in bozeman, phoenix, chicago. i've come to believe that as man-hole cover notes, it's all to his/her own. the issues of how detroit came to be are complex. for the most part it doesn't come down to the simple cliches most people assume are at fault. as architects i think we need to take that a little more seriously.
that is precisely my point. detroit is not dense and never was dense. to say that if it "remained" dense it could have survived is a new urbanist fantasy completely divorced from the history of the city. even when the city thrived it was a low density city of detached single family houses. what people forget is detroit is not just the 1 square mile downtown or even the 4 square miles from the river to new center; the city sprawls in thousands and thousands of residential blocks.
[and by the way, the map you linked does not include grosse pointe.]
jafidler, i'm a little skeptical of the "boston" shown on your map above. i could have sworn that it was actually smaller than manhattan. the shape doesn't quite look right to me either.
it's worth remembering that the auto industry is not the only thing in detroit. it was a huge deal in the the 20th century and had an oversized impact but the city existed before it and will persist after it. although it began with the riverside ribbon farms as described by jafidler above, it was also thriving during the boat building era that pre-dated the auto explosion. at that time, detroiters were adept at making the mechanical engines that replaced the older sailing ships. it was in this mileau of mechanical workshops that the experimentation with engines-on-land (i.e., cars) lead to the era of visionaries like henry ford.
today, i'm not sure i'd argue that much industrial production takes place there at all (i'm ignorant here, as i just don't know) but i think that in more recent times city has done an excellent job of creating & exporting music. from the likes motown, rock&roll, techno & electonic, and rap, the city has been a powerhouse since the 1960s. and this alludes to another interesting aspect of detroit, as an exporter of talent. yes, the population has shrunk...but it's been sending a lot of good people to leave their mark in other places.
From man hole cover: the talent that comes out of detroit is on the upper scale of things. most people that have lived in/near that city don't get impressed easily so it's alot harder to get that 'shine'.
This is very true. You have to work your butt off to achieve anything in Detroit, because life there is full of adversity and people seemingly pulling you down. So if you CAN shine, it's usually pretty brightly.
Also, as puddles said, Detroit may not be making a lot these days, but it both makes a lot of the things that allow other things to be made (gears, bolts, sheet materials, etc) and has a vast wealth in brainpower that can figure out how to make things in the first place.
and for whatever it's worth, the population of rome nearly evaporated after the fall of the empire. the city was largely left for ruins with lots of architectural details (columns, statures, etc) stripped & reused elsewhere. but last time i visited it seemed to be doing okay. cities tend to be remarkable resilient entities.
as this has become, the running detroit thread du jour. degc announced yesterday that they are going to tear down the lafayette building. sad, sad news that i hope the preservation community will stand up to fight.
Sweet Juniper's guide to Detroit is amazing. Thanks for posting it, nullassualt: I've been reading Sweet Juniper off and on for awhile and never made the connection to Detroit somehow. The guide makes me want to move back. Kind of.
Jaflder, the city limits of Detroit gre by leaps and bounds through out the last century. So that little urban core pictured in the 1950s census data was considered the "whole" of the "City of Detroit." Those figures you linked to also don't specify a date (I'm assuming current figures but that's bad because you can't apply modern city limits (that little to no one resides in) in talking about a historic paradigm shift in how people do business and how people live).
Like puddles pointed out, manufacturing... not just cars... was huge all over. How many supporting industries were there before they collapsed under a major demographics change? Cars need tires, axles, rims, trim, upholstery, finishes, non-critical parts, belts, light bulbs et cetera. I can guarantee you almost none of this was made inside assembly plants themselves. These are the kinds of industries that are very volatile in terms of density. Profit margins can often be so low that changes in fixed costs can drown them.
You can't muddle the perception of a modern in terms of historical perception because cars modify the relation of human scale to city scale.
So, yes, in the 1950s Detroit was a very high-density city reaching New York densities-- it'd also be worthy to point out that if there was any formal building codes at the time in terms of occupancy limits, jim crow laws prevented them from being applied to whites and non-whites. SROs were legal around this time anyways, so despite a limited housing stock... populations could easily soar above counting units.
The development density patterns show that Detroit fell apart in about the 1950s and by the 1970s, most of the people who worked in Detroit no longer lived in Detroit.
i don't even understand what your argument is anymore. we started with the thing about the seaports freezing, then went to the weather/freeway thing, then we moved on to the depletion of the taconite reserves in the upper peninsula, and then things like "industrial areas need...cramped housing," and now we are arguing about whether or not the density of detroit ever approached that of new york. the only thing that i'm getting out of this is that you are trying to use all these convoluted arguments to get us to believe that detroit will what...disappear in our lifetimes? that somehow the health of the manufacturing sector is in some bizarre way related to density?
rockand hill, say it again in case I misunderstood: have you ever been to Detroit?
I've spent some time driving around Detroit and I don't think it ever, in any part except the very core blocks of downtown (what in Indy we would call the "Mile Square"), ever approached/approaches the density of Manhattan - or even the density of Brooklyn, the only borough I've spent time in.
Even if I have been to Detroit, the Detroit now is not the Detroit I'm talking about that existed 60 years ago.
Instead of calling me a douche bag, why don't you pick up an intro to economic development book? Because the same exact thing I am saying is the same exact thing a thousand firms across the world are saying.
That's why no one is moving there and that's why there's no new investment. You have to be in a really shitty situation for a city to be considered the "Paris of the West" to "Eight thousand dollar homes, fee simple ownership."
I mean seriously... people who live in the urban core of Detroit rake in less than 7,000 a year while people 35 miles a way pull in over six figures? You're telling me there's absolutely nothing wrong here?
rockandhill, Detroit has serious problems, everyone acknowledges that. But your diagnoses of the illness is mostly wrong.
An economic development theory book can posit scenarios that may well be true: but the specific theory you've selected to apply to Detroit - that the manufacturing there died because people stopped walking to the factories - is inappropriate.
Sixty years ago Detroit had blocks and blocks and blocks of single family homes. They didn't tear down tenement apartment buildings to replace them with single family detached homes, so far as I know....
Calling you a douchebag isn't appropriate (bossman, don't take him or me personally!), but it does sound to me like you're trying to fit Detroit into an academic box and then shut it so you don't have to think about it any more. Detroit is a huge mess, and it demonstrates enormous human failures on many levels of socio-cultural and economic interface over the last 60 years. But no matter how badly it's fucked up, it deserves a more nuanced consideration than you're giving it.
It *is* still a large city, there are thriving parts of it and an identifiable "can do" attitude that translates into a resource of brainpower that, if protected from corrupt, self-perpetuating bureaucracies, has enormous value.
My husband spent last week in Brooklyn and New York, and was shocked at the number of artists there who were considering, how seriously I don't know, a move to Detroit. Those $7K houses and dirt cheap enormous industrial spaces, combined with easy access to materials (you can drive down the street and buy industrial felt and lead sheet at 10 different places there. In most cities you have to order that stuff in.) are attractive to some people, just not the soulless suits you're basing your theory on (they've all moved the Phoenix). If you read over the Sweet Juniper guide listed above, there are hundreds of examples of small local enterprises. Hell, Hamtramck alone has twice as many startups as all of freaking' Naptown!
Go see it. Get your nose out of a book and go see it.
people who live in the urban core of Detroit rake in less than 7,000 a year while people 35 miles a way pull in over six figures
actually incomes in the downtown core are probably on par with the incomes in all but the wealthiest oakland county suburbs; it's the residential areas of the city away from the core that are in severe economic distress, but real world facts don't seem to mean much to you.
people, people, quit the bickering and focus on what's important, like how good is that Stones song?...they may be geriatric but they can still rock the house. Anyway, to quote sir Mick:
"Detroit was smoky grey
Nothing like the good old days"
HA ha ha, "Detroit has no resources other than people resources".... c'mon, that's just stupid. Let's pretend for a second that it has little to no natural resources whatsoever....I guess we're ignoring the housing stock in the city and the built infrastructure that could be rehabilitated into something? If nothing else I see that as a huge opportunity, and if the city is actually bleeding people, then frankly upgrading the infrastructure will only be easier.
rockandhill's dumping on Detroit makes me want to move there, buy a cheap house, and renovate it for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Maybe I wanted to do that anyway.
I'm too new here to start name calling, but R&H's view is limited and naive at best. Fine by me if you want to dismiss the entire Midwest as a "fly-over" area. You are missing out big time.
I am proud of Michigan and I am proud of Detroit. When I look back 10 even 5 years ago, the change in Detroit's downtown is immense.
If I could only find 10-20 people with 5-20k to buy up a few blocks of Detroit property/housing...
although admittedly a couple of years old now this Downtown Detroit in Focus report presented some interesting info on the market opportunities and current limitations in the city, especially the downtown & surrounding neighborhoods. i wasn't surprised to find the downtown core to be slowly growing while attracting an population more educated & with better incomes than average...but i was a bit surprised to see that the perception of detroit was as a "trendy adult" destination, especially compared to other midwestern cities.
hey folks. I'm responsible for the sweet juniper blog/design*sponge guide on detroit.
anyone visiting detroit who's interested in the kinds of things discussed on this thread should definitely try to meet our friends mitch cope and gina reichart, they own the store/gallery Design 99 on Caniff in Hamtramck and they are responsible for the "powerhouse" block of $100-500 houses being renovated by artists using sustainable materials and, hopefully, powered off the grid through solar/wind technologies. also really cool people: mitch is an artist and gina is an architect. they have received a ton of media attention lately (NYT, CNN, 20/20).
also, philip cooley is the guy behind Slows barbecue and (with his brother and his small, tight crew of people) are behind a lot of cool projects and the revitalization of the corktown neighborhood.
We are raising our family in Lafayette Park (we passed up some seriously cheap Victorian mansions and 1920s Craftsmen beauties for the chance to buy a $100,000 Mies van der Rohe home). The neighborhood is a must see for architecture fans---particularly in the summer. I'm always happy to show visitors around (shoot me an e-mail).
As someone above suggests, if you're looking for rough areas they aren't hide to find. I can give recommendations for anything specific you're looking for. Enjoy Detroit, for all it's problems it's the most interesting place I've ever lived.
Welcome jdg! Glad you found us. I love Sweet Juniper; the post on watching Fred Astaire movies late at night made me weep and has been forwarded to a lot of dads I know.
so, the mayor of indianapolis was in detroit for the final four. doing research you see because the final four is gonna be in indy next year(even though it was here three years ago! there was a tornado!!!) but i guess he had to do some one on one research since he wasn't the mayor back then and everyone who worked on putting the prior final four together must have died in the tornado. he also went to the superbowl because that's going to be here also and he needs to know all about it! anywaze apparently he was pickpocketed as he stopped to help some person who was feigning a seizure and while he was down there somebody grabbed his sheet. then they all ran away.
hot Detroit action
rockandhill, the city of detroit never existed as six square miles. when it was first founded it was a collection of ribbon farms that extended a mile north from the river. do you even understand the area of the map you are citing? it is huge.
aside from the self-loathing which is the true mark of a native detroiter, the substance of your posts makes me think you've never actually lived here or have only viewed the area from a purely academic lens, i.e. you have nothing really to offer here. be off to your trout fishing, sonny.
ditto mr. jfidler
my lack of self-loathing obviously betrays the fact that i am not a native detroiter. but, in addition to living in michigan, i've also lived in bozeman, phoenix, chicago. i've come to believe that as man-hole cover notes, it's all to his/her own. the issues of how detroit came to be are complex. for the most part it doesn't come down to the simple cliches most people assume are at fault. as architects i think we need to take that a little more seriously.
San Fran is ~16,300 people per square mile.
Boston is ~12,100 people per square mile.
New York is ~67,100 people per square mile.
...
Detroit is ~6700 people per square mile.
that is precisely my point. detroit is not dense and never was dense. to say that if it "remained" dense it could have survived is a new urbanist fantasy completely divorced from the history of the city. even when the city thrived it was a low density city of detached single family houses. what people forget is detroit is not just the 1 square mile downtown or even the 4 square miles from the river to new center; the city sprawls in thousands and thousands of residential blocks.
[and by the way, the map you linked does not include grosse pointe.]
jafidler, i'm a little skeptical of the "boston" shown on your map above. i could have sworn that it was actually smaller than manhattan. the shape doesn't quite look right to me either.
it's worth remembering that the auto industry is not the only thing in detroit. it was a huge deal in the the 20th century and had an oversized impact but the city existed before it and will persist after it. although it began with the riverside ribbon farms as described by jafidler above, it was also thriving during the boat building era that pre-dated the auto explosion. at that time, detroiters were adept at making the mechanical engines that replaced the older sailing ships. it was in this mileau of mechanical workshops that the experimentation with engines-on-land (i.e., cars) lead to the era of visionaries like henry ford.
today, i'm not sure i'd argue that much industrial production takes place there at all (i'm ignorant here, as i just don't know) but i think that in more recent times city has done an excellent job of creating & exporting music. from the likes motown, rock&roll, techno & electonic, and rap, the city has been a powerhouse since the 1960s. and this alludes to another interesting aspect of detroit, as an exporter of talent. yes, the population has shrunk...but it's been sending a lot of good people to leave their mark in other places.
From man hole cover: the talent that comes out of detroit is on the upper scale of things. most people that have lived in/near that city don't get impressed easily so it's alot harder to get that 'shine'.
This is very true. You have to work your butt off to achieve anything in Detroit, because life there is full of adversity and people seemingly pulling you down. So if you CAN shine, it's usually pretty brightly.
Also, as puddles said, Detroit may not be making a lot these days, but it both makes a lot of the things that allow other things to be made (gears, bolts, sheet materials, etc) and has a vast wealth in brainpower that can figure out how to make things in the first place.
kalamazoo has good beer.
and for whatever it's worth, the population of rome nearly evaporated after the fall of the empire. the city was largely left for ruins with lots of architectural details (columns, statures, etc) stripped & reused elsewhere. but last time i visited it seemed to be doing okay. cities tend to be remarkable resilient entities.
SPQD - Senatus Populusque Detroit
as this has become, the running detroit thread du jour. degc announced yesterday that they are going to tear down the lafayette building. sad, sad news that i hope the preservation community will stand up to fight.
chin tiki went down two weeks ago.
well, in all honestly i don't think anyone will really miss the chin tiki...
more on chin tiki via supergaydetroit
bossman, i did my master's thesis on a tiki themed casino in las vegas. i will miss the chin tiki.
@OP:
Design Sponge - Detroit Guide
ooh la la...nice addition, nullassult. thanks for sharing.
seriously? that's amazing. i don't recall that.
Sweet Juniper's guide to Detroit is amazing. Thanks for posting it, nullassualt: I've been reading Sweet Juniper off and on for awhile and never made the connection to Detroit somehow. The guide makes me want to move back. Kind of.
Jaflder, the city limits of Detroit gre by leaps and bounds through out the last century. So that little urban core pictured in the 1950s census data was considered the "whole" of the "City of Detroit." Those figures you linked to also don't specify a date (I'm assuming current figures but that's bad because you can't apply modern city limits (that little to no one resides in) in talking about a historic paradigm shift in how people do business and how people live).
Like puddles pointed out, manufacturing... not just cars... was huge all over. How many supporting industries were there before they collapsed under a major demographics change? Cars need tires, axles, rims, trim, upholstery, finishes, non-critical parts, belts, light bulbs et cetera. I can guarantee you almost none of this was made inside assembly plants themselves. These are the kinds of industries that are very volatile in terms of density. Profit margins can often be so low that changes in fixed costs can drown them.
You can't muddle the perception of a modern in terms of historical perception because cars modify the relation of human scale to city scale.
So, yes, in the 1950s Detroit was a very high-density city reaching New York densities-- it'd also be worthy to point out that if there was any formal building codes at the time in terms of occupancy limits, jim crow laws prevented them from being applied to whites and non-whites. SROs were legal around this time anyways, so despite a limited housing stock... populations could easily soar above counting units.
The development density patterns show that Detroit fell apart in about the 1950s and by the 1970s, most of the people who worked in Detroit no longer lived in Detroit.
counterpoint:
all of modern, recent industrial china.
i don't even understand what your argument is anymore. we started with the thing about the seaports freezing, then went to the weather/freeway thing, then we moved on to the depletion of the taconite reserves in the upper peninsula, and then things like "industrial areas need...cramped housing," and now we are arguing about whether or not the density of detroit ever approached that of new york. the only thing that i'm getting out of this is that you are trying to use all these convoluted arguments to get us to believe that detroit will what...disappear in our lifetimes? that somehow the health of the manufacturing sector is in some bizarre way related to density?
what argument? i thought we were just talking about how sweet detroit is/was/will be.
my favorite part of the above discussion was definitely the taconite.
i'm heading to mexicantown right now.
that somehow the health of the manufacturing sector is in some bizarre way related to density?
Bingo.
And that Detroit has no resources outside of people resources.
man, you really don't know when to quit.
rockand hill, say it again in case I misunderstood: have you ever been to Detroit?
I've spent some time driving around Detroit and I don't think it ever, in any part except the very core blocks of downtown (what in Indy we would call the "Mile Square"), ever approached/approaches the density of Manhattan - or even the density of Brooklyn, the only borough I've spent time in.
you are a serious douchebag, and you have no idea what you are talking about. seriously, it is silly. is this you, puddles?
Even if I have been to Detroit, the Detroit now is not the Detroit I'm talking about that existed 60 years ago.
Instead of calling me a douche bag, why don't you pick up an intro to economic development book? Because the same exact thing I am saying is the same exact thing a thousand firms across the world are saying.
That's why no one is moving there and that's why there's no new investment. You have to be in a really shitty situation for a city to be considered the "Paris of the West" to "Eight thousand dollar homes, fee simple ownership."
I mean seriously... people who live in the urban core of Detroit rake in less than 7,000 a year while people 35 miles a way pull in over six figures? You're telling me there's absolutely nothing wrong here?
This feels like Ho Chi Minh City all over again.
rockandhill, Detroit has serious problems, everyone acknowledges that. But your diagnoses of the illness is mostly wrong.
An economic development theory book can posit scenarios that may well be true: but the specific theory you've selected to apply to Detroit - that the manufacturing there died because people stopped walking to the factories - is inappropriate.
Sixty years ago Detroit had blocks and blocks and blocks of single family homes. They didn't tear down tenement apartment buildings to replace them with single family detached homes, so far as I know....
Calling you a douchebag isn't appropriate (bossman, don't take him or me personally!), but it does sound to me like you're trying to fit Detroit into an academic box and then shut it so you don't have to think about it any more. Detroit is a huge mess, and it demonstrates enormous human failures on many levels of socio-cultural and economic interface over the last 60 years. But no matter how badly it's fucked up, it deserves a more nuanced consideration than you're giving it.
It *is* still a large city, there are thriving parts of it and an identifiable "can do" attitude that translates into a resource of brainpower that, if protected from corrupt, self-perpetuating bureaucracies, has enormous value.
My husband spent last week in Brooklyn and New York, and was shocked at the number of artists there who were considering, how seriously I don't know, a move to Detroit. Those $7K houses and dirt cheap enormous industrial spaces, combined with easy access to materials (you can drive down the street and buy industrial felt and lead sheet at 10 different places there. In most cities you have to order that stuff in.) are attractive to some people, just not the soulless suits you're basing your theory on (they've all moved the Phoenix). If you read over the Sweet Juniper guide listed above, there are hundreds of examples of small local enterprises. Hell, Hamtramck alone has twice as many startups as all of freaking' Naptown!
Go see it. Get your nose out of a book and go see it.
oh come on, i was just joking around with the whole douchebag thing! sorry.
actually incomes in the downtown core are probably on par with the incomes in all but the wealthiest oakland county suburbs; it's the residential areas of the city away from the core that are in severe economic distress, but real world facts don't seem to mean much to you.
people, people, quit the bickering and focus on what's important, like how good is that Stones song?...they may be geriatric but they can still rock the house. Anyway, to quote sir Mick:
"Detroit was smoky grey
Nothing like the good old days"
and he should know.
and then there's:
this thread has really made me realize how completely limited academic and google-based "research" actually is.
rockandhill, come visit detroit and when you do drop me a line. i'll show you around the place a bit.
HA ha ha, "Detroit has no resources other than people resources".... c'mon, that's just stupid. Let's pretend for a second that it has little to no natural resources whatsoever....I guess we're ignoring the housing stock in the city and the built infrastructure that could be rehabilitated into something? If nothing else I see that as a huge opportunity, and if the city is actually bleeding people, then frankly upgrading the infrastructure will only be easier.
rockandhill's dumping on Detroit makes me want to move there, buy a cheap house, and renovate it for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Maybe I wanted to do that anyway.
wonderK are you crazy??? Haven't you looked at the maps???
I'm too new here to start name calling, but R&H's view is limited and naive at best. Fine by me if you want to dismiss the entire Midwest as a "fly-over" area. You are missing out big time.
I am proud of Michigan and I am proud of Detroit. When I look back 10 even 5 years ago, the change in Detroit's downtown is immense.
If I could only find 10-20 people with 5-20k to buy up a few blocks of Detroit property/housing...
although admittedly a couple of years old now this Downtown Detroit in Focus report presented some interesting info on the market opportunities and current limitations in the city, especially the downtown & surrounding neighborhoods. i wasn't surprised to find the downtown core to be slowly growing while attracting an population more educated & with better incomes than average...but i was a bit surprised to see that the perception of detroit was as a "trendy adult" destination, especially compared to other midwestern cities.
Wow, great thread. What a way to kill half an hour... I love Deeetroit!
more hot detroit action from 80s:
The scene
much better than "the new dance show."
1982 awesomeness
the slingshot
Check out this blog post and click on the photo of all the abandoned houses - you can scroll along them left to right one by one. Amazing.
hey folks. I'm responsible for the sweet juniper blog/design*sponge guide on detroit.
anyone visiting detroit who's interested in the kinds of things discussed on this thread should definitely try to meet our friends mitch cope and gina reichart, they own the store/gallery Design 99 on Caniff in Hamtramck and they are responsible for the "powerhouse" block of $100-500 houses being renovated by artists using sustainable materials and, hopefully, powered off the grid through solar/wind technologies. also really cool people: mitch is an artist and gina is an architect. they have received a ton of media attention lately (NYT, CNN, 20/20).
also, philip cooley is the guy behind Slows barbecue and (with his brother and his small, tight crew of people) are behind a lot of cool projects and the revitalization of the corktown neighborhood.
We are raising our family in Lafayette Park (we passed up some seriously cheap Victorian mansions and 1920s Craftsmen beauties for the chance to buy a $100,000 Mies van der Rohe home). The neighborhood is a must see for architecture fans---particularly in the summer. I'm always happy to show visitors around (shoot me an e-mail).
As someone above suggests, if you're looking for rough areas they aren't hide to find. I can give recommendations for anything specific you're looking for. Enjoy Detroit, for all it's problems it's the most interesting place I've ever lived.
thanks jdg! go spartans!!!
Welcome jdg! Glad you found us. I love Sweet Juniper; the post on watching Fred Astaire movies late at night made me weep and has been forwarded to a lot of dads I know.
figured if anyone is in the D on may9th ... i'm having my release event at the 'works'
feel free to see the artists that support the line at www.237am.blogspot.com
just saying.....
so, the mayor of indianapolis was in detroit for the final four. doing research you see because the final four is gonna be in indy next year(even though it was here three years ago! there was a tornado!!!) but i guess he had to do some one on one research since he wasn't the mayor back then and everyone who worked on putting the prior final four together must have died in the tornado. he also went to the superbowl because that's going to be here also and he needs to know all about it! anywaze apparently he was pickpocketed as he stopped to help some person who was feigning a seizure and while he was down there somebody grabbed his sheet. then they all ran away.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
welcome to the 'D'
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