City of Detroit Files for Bankruptcy

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

This is a difficult assertion for a person living in the Washington DC area to get behind. I hardly ever see families with kids in the District. Only in Maryland and Virginia. The whole neighborhood to the north of my office is being gentrified by, as far as I can tell, white gay men. DC is kind of an object lesson in what a lot of gay men can do for your city.

Again, Washington DC?

Agreed on D.C., but that is almost a completely separate animal in terms of demographics, isn't it? I'm not sure if it is still true, but I remember once reading that unmarried females (maybe it was some subset like professional white females or something) outnumbered similar males by some ridiculous ration. But the rest of the country isn't like that.

On another point of yours, though - nobody in Ann Arbor or Lansing even goes to Detroit very often, much less thinks of the themselves as having something to do with it.

Right. I've got relatives who live in AA, and some of the kids -- now over 18 -- have never been there.

[Guest Raidne]

Agreed on D.C., but that is almost a completely separate animal in terms of demographics, isn't it?...the rest of the country isn't like that.

Except future Detroit? Why not? You're not going to fill out the whole city that way, but nobody wants to. Clear a ring of undeveloped land and build up the city center. Fill it out with yuppies and artists. Why not? God knows they buy enough shit - should bring back some local retail.

The thing with Detroit is that it doesn't take that much to see positive change.

But not the kind of change needed to make $5 billion or whatever it is in pension payments. The state is going to have to deal with the pension situation, but I'd say it should be at whatever the equivalent state employee pension is, not the exact same pension rate as under Detroit's agreement (unless it's less). And the state should pay the pension, not bail out the fund. And take management of the fund, as well, probably for at least a decade, if not longer, or permanently.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Thanks to everyone for shooting holes in my last post, it was an idea I pulled out of my ass. Good to see how wrong I was.

Also, all of Isk's posts in this thread are goddamned awesome.

Interestingly, in Los Angeles at least, as the first wave of hipsters/urban-renewalists are having kids enter school age the expected thing is not happening.

That is, the school age children of these hipsters/urban-renewalists are going to public schools in the area where their parents live--and their parents haven't moved to the suburbs! (iirc they're also seeing big school performance improvements with the younger cohorts of kids in elementary school in these areas). And possibly because they are hipsters, they can't afford to send their kids to private schools in LA (generally about the cost of college, 25-45,000/year).

The larger question is whether the hipsters and urban-renewalists are numerous enough to sustain/revitalize an entire city, and I just don't think they are. At least, not enough to save a city that has lost much of its middle/working class. They may be able to save certain discrete areas or neighborhoods, or be enough for a city that is still in pretty good shape. But I don't think they're enough -- certainly not in Detroit or in other cities that are in really deep problem. And of course, there are a lot of cities that don't have the cultural cachet of L.A. to pull in the hipsters anyway.

[Guest Raidne]

...save a city...

I'm talking about bulldozing down huge sections and reforesting, and revitalizing the rest. What is your idea of "saving" the city?

[lokisnow]

I don't think you need to rely entirely on hipsters, they're just the early adopters that prove it can be done. Nobody wanted to live in the suburbs in the 1930s because it didn't exist, but they were built and people came. Building new housing and the smart urban development that should go along with it is the catalyst that should make the reclamation self-sustaining.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I don't think you need to rely entirely on hipsters, they're just the early adopters that prove it can be done.

It doesn't prove that "reclamation" can be done. It proves only what it is that actually occured -- that you can get some hipsters to move back into the city. Again, to show that it is practically possible, you'd need to show some place where you had a significant middle class (or "white") flight that actually was reversed, and the city rebuilt. Until that actually happens somewhere in a major city, we still don't have a template for what (if anything) actually works.

Building new housing and the smart urban development that should go along with it is the catalyst that should make the reclamation self-sustaining.

I'm not saying that it can't be done. But what you describe is just a theory, and there are frankly just as good theories as to why it shouldn't work. Most of our larger cities developed because people came to those cities looking for work. It was the age when factories were more likely to be built near cities. And for awhile, it was true -- the cities were creating lots of those working class jobs in any number of small/mid-sized manufacturing facilities located in cities. But that's largely not true any more. When you look at where new factories are being built, it very often is in smaller cities, or even places that aren't cities at all. And given the incredible growth in information technology, as well as more efficient shipping mechanisms (UPS, etc.) that really didn't exist before, there's really no reason to be built in cities either. All that gets you is a bunch of environmental (big issue there with brownfields law), tax, and regulatory headaches, as well as old infrastructure, that just makes it less efficient than locating elsewhere.

So the point is that even if you get some hipsters to move back in working at whatever jobs hipsters do, you are still left with no jobs for the masses of urban poor left behind when the productive jobs left. You're left really with nothing more than a service sector financed largely by public assistance dollars, and that is not a sustainable model.

Btw, the brownfields stuff is a reference to environmental law that holds the current owner of a property liable for whatever environmental harm or violations exist on a property, even if the owner had nothing to do with it. Because so many cities had buildings and enterprises build before there were these environmental codes, or proper regulation, a great many areas of a city contain potentially huge environmental liabilities for a new business that wants to come in and start up on that land. So to avoid those liabilities, they choose to build away from those cities. And of course, the very nature of trying to start a business in a city, where population density is much higher, etc., means you're more likely to get noise complaints, regulatory challenges from people who don't want a factory there, etc.. So again, business just choose to go elsewhere. And the population a city can realistically support is going to be based on the number of jobs it has.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Shryke,

Is moving to a neighborhood outside the boundaries of a City "seceding" from the city? That sounds like a move not a secession.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I'm talking about bulldozing down huge sections and reforesting, and revitalizing the rest. What is your idea of "saving" the city?

Don't have one. And sure, you can bulldoze down abandoned area, but how do you "revitalize" the rest unless you can bring in real productive jobs for the masses of urban population that are already there? I mean, I think what you'll be left with is a bunch of bulldozed areas, some yuppy/hipster areas, and slums. That's better than a massive blighted area, but it still leaves a huge problem.

[Stag Country]

Except future Detroit? Why not? You're not going to fill out the whole city that way, but nobody wants to. Clear a ring of undeveloped land and build up the city center. Fill it out with yuppies and artists. Why not? God knows they buy enough shit - should bring back some local retail.

The thing with Detroit is that it doesn't take that much to see positive change.

But not the kind of change needed to make $5 billion or whatever it is in pension payments. The state is going to have to deal with the pension situation, but I'd say it should be at whatever the equivalent state employee pension is, not the exact same pension rate as under Detroit's agreement (unless it's less). And the state should pay the pension, not bail out the fund. And take management of the fund, as well, probably for at least a decade, if not longer, or permanently.

Well I guess we are having a disagreement about the population there. There's almost 6 million people in the metro DC area, but only about 600k in the relatively small downtown area. I suspect the people in the very affluent neighborhoods make up a very small minority in the city, seeing as how the median income in the city is under $60,000.00. When I mentioned the people that are there for the career transition, you are correct though, most that I know lived in the outlying suburbs or across the river in Alexandria.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Except future Detroit? Why not?

Dollars flow into D.C. because of the massive size of the government operation, both federal and local. That's the "business" of D.C., for the most part. Sustained by armies of lobbyists, and then a bunch of gay artists. You've got foreign diplomats foreign tourism dollars, and a hospitality industry premised upon D.C.'s status as the home of the federal government. And sure, that puts enough money down to keep the rest of the city going as a service economy, although the rest of D.C. is not in very good shape economically.

And that's just not the case for the rest of the major cities in the country that aren't the home of the massive federal government.

[Guest Raidne]

Don't have one. And sure, you can bulldoze down abandoned area, but how do you "revitalize" the rest unless you can bring in real productive jobs for the masses of urban population that are already there? I mean, I think what you'll be left with is a bunch of bulldozed areas, some yuppy/hipster areas, and slums. That's better than a massive blighted area, but it still leaves a huge problem.

Okay, there's downtown Detroit and Greektown and then near city center right on the other side of 75, to the NW. These are all contiguous. That's the part revitalizing. Then there's Grosse Pointe, Ferndale & Royal Oak, and Dearborn all bordering the city. These areas are fine. Then everything else is a mess. It's a huge problem, but at least all of the blighted areas are contiguous, and all of the more easily savable areas are contiguous, and at the center.

[Guest Raidne]

...only about 600k in the relatively small downtown area.

Downtown DC is K St NW. The rest of DC is DC, not downtown DC. If it's relatively small, it's because DC is relatively small. If there are bunch of people living outside of DC in the suburbs, then it and Detroit are alike that way - look up the population of the Detroit metro area sometime.

Dollars flow into D.C. because of the massive size of the government operation, both federal and local.

Fair enough, but I think you are talking about ending up with an entirely different kind of Detroit than what I am talking about. Detroit should look like a city for 700,000 people. Demolish and/or reforest, and - as a libertarian law school professor of mine suggested, auction it off to the surrounding areas.

[Shryke]

Shryke,

Is moving to a neighborhood outside the boundaries of a City "seceding" from the city? That sounds like a move not a secession.

There's a difference between moving to the suburbs and then commuting into the city and moving to the suburbs and then working in the suburbs too.

When enough people do the second, you aren't really much of a suburb anymore. You have become economical independent of the city nearby.

[Shryke]

Don't have one. And sure, you can bulldoze down abandoned area, but how do you "revitalize" the rest unless you can bring in real productive jobs for the masses of urban population that are already there? I mean, I think what you'll be left with is a bunch of bulldozed areas, some yuppy/hipster areas, and slums. That's better than a massive blighted area, but it still leaves a huge problem.

Look at Pittsburg and whatever they did. But to pull anything like that off, you need at least to maintain a downtown core, which hipsters might be able to act as the seed of.

Hell, you could maybe combine it with Raidne's idea and bulldoze a bunch of abandoned sections of the city and turn them over for industry or something.

Though I think the reputation of Detroit is gonna hinder this.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Shryke,

Sure, but neither is an act of "secession" from the existing political boundaries of a city. Are you saying a city Government should have the power to prevent a business relocating if the business desires to relocate?

[Shryke]

Shryke,

Sure, but neither is an act of "secession" from the existing political boundaries of a city. Are you saying a city Government should have the power to prevent a business relocating if the business desires to relocate?

I have no idea where you are getting this shit from Scot.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Shryke,

Then I'm confused by your earlier suggestion that people leaving Detroit were seceding from Detroit.

[Commodore]

Kickstarter to save Detroit, hoping to raise $20 billion

[Shryke]

Me:

They didn't just move out of the city, they seceded from it and cut all ties.

(with corrected spelling)

I don't quite get the confusion. Maybe it's some association you have with the word secede?

They left the city and cut ties with it. They are more like independent cities afaik then suburbs of Detroit

[Shryke]

Kickstarter to save Detroit, hoping to raise $20 billion

Hehehe.