Quote:
Originally Posted by fflint
Nobody denies--and few care--that metropolitan Detroit is a donut with a sugary ring of suburbs--to which the solvent and ambitious have retreated--surrounding negative space. But that is not the subject of this thread, and I'm calling bullshit on the compulsive declarations about the sugar-and-spice-and-everything-nice of boring Michigan suburbia. Start another thread, if you must, to extol the many virtues of post-war autocentric suburban sprawl.
The less flattering topic of this thread, the epic and ongoing decline of a once-great American city, is something that its homers apparently cannot abide. But if we cannot discuss this, if we cannot examine this, then we certainly cannot solve this.
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mmmmm...... donuts.... I miss your old avatar.
but to be fair, not all of suburban detroit is
"post-war autocentric suburban sprawl". the gross points, for example, are a prime example of intact inner ring pre-war suburban development. the post-war sprawl-burban crap is certainly also there, just as it's found everywhere, but metro detroit, by virtue of its size in the prewar era, has a much more varied suburban format than one finds in a typical sun-belt sprawler that has seen >75% of its growth in the post-war era.
none of that is to say that we shouldn't be allowed to talk about the decline of the city proper. however, i too tire of the whole
"why don't they just destroy the whole city and start over?/they should abandon the city/why don't they just turn it into a big giant farm?" lost-cause mantra that gets repeated over and over in detroit threads, and i'm not even from the place. i can easily see how it would be even more exhausting for a local. most forumers don't come to detroit threads to have an honest discussion about solutions, it seems.