How do you see Detroit in 20 years?

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Totally agree. Within the context of midwest cities, detroit and cincy are pretty damn different. Cincy is hardcore river city, along with its cousins louisville, pittsburgh, and st. Louis, while Detroit is hardcore great lakes city, along with its cousins cleveland, buffalo, and milwaukee. Chicago also fits in that group too, though it got a lot brickier because of the great fire.

st. louis is actually a kind of weird hybrid and is laid out *sort* of like cleveland but brick and without a lake of course. especially with case western and all of the old suburbs that extend “behind” it.

[the urban politician]

So my prediction:

Downtown Detroit will be more established and humming with life in twenty years.

However, it will be a sea of prosperity in the midst of what will still be large swaths of despair.

I do see neighborhood development happening, but it will be slow, and mostly in the form of those master planned communities by large corporate developers, and it will resemble very little of the fine grain neighborhood fabric that we all cherish.

Expect to see some genuine attempts at “new urbanism” with walkable main streets, etc. But expect it to be contrived and full of parking.

It may not differ much from some of the large scale projects going on in troubled parts of the South Side of Chicago, where they tore down public housing and are rebuilding mixed income developments. But even the Chicago examples are built on the existing streetgrid and, due to transit and lower car ownership, arent too badly overrun with parking infrastructure—in fact, there is very little multilevel garage construction that I’m aware of.

The need to accommodate the car will certainly play a big role in whatever goes up in these Detroit hoods.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

So my prediction:

Downtown Detroit will be more established and humming with life in twenty years.

You would hope so considering the baseline.

Every single other city in America will likely be able to make this claim.

[dubu]

american cities age well because they arent crazy like dubai. in 20 years cities like boise will be cool cities, if they get light rail or brt. the best things about cities is public transportation and how old it looks imo.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by lio45

He's still around?

I recall reading this (probably on SSP) at the time it was published, and finding the guy... fascinating (in a time capsule way).

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...p-dead-detroit

Yes unfortunately, he just barely got reelected in 2016 during the trump wave. He's old as dirt and finally retiring and will not win another election even if he wanted to, Oakland county now skews blue and now has more democrats in control than republicans.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

You would hope so considering the baseline.

Every single other city in America will likely be able to make this claim.

Downtown already is established and humming right now, I don't think most of you have been to Detroit in the last 5 years.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Yeah, I'm not sure chicago has much to do with detroit's rejuvenation.

Detroit is gonna do its own detroit thing, chicago's influence will be minimal at best.

Sure, some priced out artists and makers might make the move over to detroit from chicago, but those types are/will be doing that from a lot of other cities too.

Agree. I don't think Chicago or Detroit have benefited much at the expense of each other. Usually, when one is doing well then so is the other. If anything, both are in the same boat in that they are far more susceptible to being cannibalized by their suburbs than each other.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Agree. I don't think Chicago or Detroit have benefited much at the expense of each other. Usually, when one is doing well then so is the other. If anything, both are in the same boat in that they are far more susceptible to being cannibalized by their suburbs than each other.

Chicago’s burbs spent decades cannibalizing the city.

And then.........some BIG TIME revenge happened.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i don’t see the austin model applicable in the midwest except for columbus...which is already doing it. the path forward i’m seeing for rustbelt cities is a slower new england type recovery (partially) using the presence of hardcore research universities relentlessly hammering billions into urban cores like what washington university, et al. is already doing like a giant starter motor. detroit doesn’t have this but could someday get it and absolutely NEEDS it. relying on being “chicago overflow” as has been suggested is also NOT a plan...theres how many metro areas surrounding chicago at approximately the same distance as detroit? indy probably already has this as covered as its going to get...chicago is simply too affordable.

Detroit is getting New York overflow. I don't know about any meaningful transplants from Chicago, except boomerangs. Which makes sense because there are plenty of Detroit-like qualities in Chicago for it not to be that fascinating.

[ardecila]

Chicago isn't pricing people out, there are still plenty of neighborhoods for edgy creative types to live and work affordably without severing all their social/professional ties by changing cities.

That's not to say people aren't fleeing Chicago, but they are usually fleeing because Chicago has qualities they just don't like. Detroit has most of those same issues, so I don't see a lot of Chicago->Detroit migration other than maybe native Michiganders looking to find an urban environment closer to home.

[goat314]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i don’t see the austin model applicable in the midwest except for columbus...which is already doing it. the path forward i’m seeing for rustbelt cities is a slower new england type recovery (partially) using the presence of hardcore research universities relentlessly hammering billions into urban cores like what washington university, et al. is already doing like a giant starter motor. detroit doesn’t have this but could someday get it and absolutely NEEDS it. relying on being “chicago overflow” as has been suggested is also NOT a plan...theres how many metro areas surrounding chicago at approximately the same distance as detroit? indy probably already has this as covered as its going to get...chicago is simply too affordable.

detroit may have saved chicago (all the college educated michigan transplants i remember FLOODING wicker park in the mid 00s) but chicago won’t save detroit. we definitely don’t talk about trying to get “chicago overflow” (or poaching illinois like indiana) in st. louis...we’re too busy trying to crank the starter.

I heard from a little birdie that Wash U actually recruited East Coasters (specifically Bostonians) to teach them how to effectively gentrify the city. In fact, Chancellor Wrighton spent a significant amount of time at MIT before coming to St. Louis. Now we have Cortex which is booming like crazy creating billions in spillover development in other neighborhoods. The good thing about St. Louis is that it's half the size of Detroit and a rather compact city, it also has a significant sized light rail system. So when the tech district is complete (if it will ever stop building) the spill over will have a supersized effect.

[Pedestrian]

By Mary Childs
March 8, 2019 3:18 p.m. ET

. . . In the shiny downtown of the Motor City, there’s cautious hope that the latest revitalization, or re-re-revitalization, will be the one that sticks.

Ten years after Detroit was knocked flat by the one-two punch of the financial crisis and the near-collapse of the U.S. auto industry, it is today home to thriving start-ups, sleek hotels, and single-origin-coffee shops.

That’s due to a wave of private investment, itself due broadly to a decade of low interest rates. More specifically, low rates fueled the rise of Detroit’s biggest backer, Dan Gilbert, the founder of Quicken Loans, now the nation’s No. 1 home mortgage lender.

This January evening, Gilbert was interviewing Robert Smith, the founder of the private-equity giant Vista Equity Partners, as he announced a new initiative to provide “on ramps” for those with reduced access to opportunity, especially African-American communities.

Not everyone in the room had heard of Smith, the richest black man in the country, but everyone knew Gilbert.

Since 2009, Gilbert has pumped $5.6 billion into downtown Detroit—his own and borrowed money—and now owns more than 100 buildings in the 7.2-square-mile center. He has orchestrated the construction of ice-skating rinks and pop-up marketplaces in heated glass booths and coaxed in buzzy businesses that will generate lines around the block, even in the city’s notoriously brutal winter.

It’s having an impact. Detroit is just five years out of bankruptcy, with 38% of its population living in poverty, but you wouldn’t know it on certain blocks of downtown. People sit on $80,000 couches in the warm public lobbies of Gilbert-owned buildings, playing chess, sending emails on free Wi-Fi supplied by Gilbert’s Rocket Fiber, as confident-looking young professionals in fleece vests and middle-age men in suits walk past. It looks robust and vibrant, which is what Gilbert needs, to convince others to buy in . . . .

The city is trying to spread the revival beyond downtown, to “the neighborhoods”—areas in the rest of Detroit’s 140 square miles. It is introducing a program to pour $130 million into seven areas to ride the optimism and replicate in miniature what Gilbert has achieved . . . .

Detroit also has gotten a boost from recent Qualified Opportunity Zone legislation, meant to stream investments, via tax incentives, into low-income neighborhoods like those in Detroit. Gilbert was on the advisory board for the group that invented Opportunity Zones, and will probably benefit as the downtown business district is included . . . .

https://www.barrons.com/articles/det...?mod=hp_LEAD_2

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

relying on being “chicago overflow” as has been suggested is also NOT a plan...theres how many metro areas surrounding chicago at approximately the same distance as detroit? indy probably already has this as covered as its going to get...chicago is simply too affordable.

Don't forget about milwaukee in that category as well.

Hell, based on my anecdotal experience, i'd put milwaukee ahead of indy.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I don't know about any meaningful transplants from Chicago, except boomerangs. Which makes sense because there are plenty of Detroit-like qualities in Chicago for it not to be that fascinating.

Yeah, if you're in chicago and looking for large tracts of ailing and failing legacy urbanism, you sure as shit don't have to travel to detroit (or anywhere else) to find it. The windy city has that shit in spades.

[hauntedheadnc]

Detroit in twenty years?

• Video Link

But seriously, what I wish would happen is that as all the cool-kid cities like Seattle and Denver reach the point that normal people no longer have any prayer of being able to afford them, that cities with good bones up in the Rust Belt will find whatever marketing secret it is to sell themselves to all the people who'd rather be living in a big city but who are not tech bros and can't afford it. It would be nice to see Detroit's population stabilize and -- dare I dream the impossible dream? -- actually increase, even if just a little.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by The North One

Downtown already is established and humming right now, I don't think most of you have been to Detroit in the last 5 years.

True. I haven't been to Detroit in the last 5 years and I'm sure [or rather, know] it is doing much better than 5 years ago, however, every single other city-downtown area in the nation is better off today than 5 years ago with in-fill residential and increased occupied commercial space --

WTS, I agree with the Urban Politician's post that Detroit will be even more established and humming 20 years from now considering that - as you've pointed out - what has happened in the last 5 years.

[Crawford]

This whole discussion is problematic, because as usual per SSP, we conflate city proper with metropolitan characteristics. Detroit is a metro of over 5 million, of which slightly over 10% live within Detroit city limits. When we're talking regional migration patterns, regional challenges and the like, the discussion always seems centered around exceptional inner-city characteristics (i.e. Detroit's wastelands) rather than general metropolitan characteristics.

Most "Detroiters" live lives that have nothing to do with what we're talking about (they aren't urban pioneers, or blight fethishists, or edgy hipsters priced out of Brooklyn, etc.); they're normal folks living in some average suburb, and if they moved from, say, Chicago to Detroit, it isn't because they're joining some radical ghetto art collective, it's because they want childcare from mother-in-law, they found a good job, or some other utterly banal reason.

And again, the biggest factor in Detroit's relative success isn't downtown, or gentrification, or even Dan Gilbert, it's the auto industry. If the industry is humming, the region is doing fine.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by isaidso

One of Detroit's great assets is the University of Michigan, a very highly regarded school. It's on the periphery but close enough that it's a big plus for Detroit. It's the type of asset that can be exploited to rejuvenate the surrounding economy.

Michigan is indeed a great school, and within the Detroit CSA (but not the MSA), but Ann Arbor is quite economically/culturally distinct. Also, I believe most Michigan students are out-of-state, and leave the state upon graduation, so other regions benefit from Michigan's human capital. The school will probably never play a central role in the region's fortunes.

Also, I think we overplay universities and localized economic growth. There are a ton of elite research universities that sit in relative economic backwaters. Not everywhere can be a Stanford (and even there, East Palo Alto, basically a ghetto, sits next to campus).

[uaarkson]

Forget UofM, Wayne State had the fastest improving graduation rate in the country last year.

https://www.michiganradio.org/post/w...on-rate-nation

[uaarkson]

Originally Posted by Crawford

And again, the biggest factor in Detroit's relative success isn't downtown, or gentrification, or even Dan Gilbert, it's the auto industry. If the industry is humming, the region is doing fine.

This isn't 2009 dude. Michigan's economy is changing, fast. The auto industry, while it still is and always will be dominant, has decreased as a share of middle-high income employment to a staggering degree since the recession. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of new jobs in tech, medical, bio, chemical, R&D, etc. have galvanized the region in the last decade. As long as the Big Three aren't on the verge of bankruptcy, their ups and downs will be ever more insignificant for Michigan as time goes on.

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

True. I haven't been to Detroit in the last 5 years and I'm sure [or rather, know] it is doing much better than 5 years ago, however, every single other city-downtown area in the nation is better off today than 5 years ago with in-fill residential and increased occupied commercial space --

As someone that spent a lot of time in Detroit back in 2009-2011, I can tell you that it has been a day/night transformation. Downtown went from abandoned and left for dead, to vibrant and downright thriving in the space of about 7 years. And this is only the beginning.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by uaarkson

This isn't 2009 dude. Michigan's economy is changing, fast. The auto industry, while it still is and always will be dominant, has decreased as a share of middle-high income employment to a staggering degree since the recession.

Could you show me evidence for your claim? That's a pretty outrageous claim.

The idea that the share of regional economic product tied to the auto industry has declined since 2009 is borderline ludicrous. The industry has boomed like crazy during that time period.

And re. downtown, I'm probably older than you, and remember it 25 years ago. It was busier than now. Much grittier but busier. And, again, you're conflating things, because the whole region was a mess 10 years ago. The downtown boom is mirrored by the regional boom. For every renovated building downtown, there's a plowed-over cornfield with 200 new 700k homes in Northville Township. And all of this is possible because of the auto industry.