View Single Post
  #97  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2013, 5:39 PM
Dr Nevergold Dr Nevergold is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Winnipeg
Posts: 20,104
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
WHAT?

raze all 132 sq. miles except for some "truly historic buildings"? what about all of the intact neighborhoods that still exist? what about the 700,000+ people that still call the city home? what about the rejuvenating city core from downtown up to midtown? your solution is really to just raze it all and start over? what? should chicago also be razed and rebuilt because of the deplorable condition of the south and west side ghettos?

besides, where in the world would the money come from?

large swaths of detroit already have been effectively razed, with little on the horizon for market-driven redevelopment for many of those areas. how could more wanton wholesale destruction possibly be the answer?
Hmm, the easy answer to that is a huge federal bailout to the city that is still inside one of America's largest metro areas, 6 million people call the Detroit-Flint area home. A bailout that has strong strings attached would be required.

Raze the crap left in the city, rebuild its ailing infrastructure, create federally sanctioned and backed investment banks that are private in addition to direct public funding to have the ability to do such huge steps, necessary steps to rebuild. Get the nation's best developers, urban planners, and community organizers together and develop a new plan for Detroit.

Each block of Detroit that has been razed needs intense redevelopment, condo and housing development, retail development, transportation and infrastructure rebuilding such as water lines that are 100+ years old, electric, gas, etc.

Essentially those who have homes taken via eminent domain should get near-free replacements or mortgage equalized transfers, considering the radical condition the city finds itself in. Innovative programs that show if a person has a home with a $40k mortgage, they should be transferred to a new condo or housing development and owe $40k left on that loan at the new place even if the property took $100k to build. The 'bailout' would fund the remainder of that loss.

Then again, my ideas are a bit utopian at best. Raw capitalism will keep Detroit on its back for years to come, probably my entire lifetime for certain. I've always been the type of person to believe government has a role where the private market has such massive failure. Using every power the government has to make life survivable, livable, and redevelop a destroyed city is probably government's most important role in society to better everyone and give people hope and a future to depend on.

But I know it won't happen, and so do Detroiters. Even with Obama in office there's no talk of a people bailout, it'll never happen. Its immaterial I suppose and just some random thoughts I had. If we could seriously withdraw funding for unnecessary military affairs and reinvest into parts of America that are in dire need of repair it'd be great.

Last edited by Dr Nevergold; Feb 6, 2013 at 5:49 PM.
Reply With Quote