Detroit, the new dairy capitol of the U.S.?

My father in law and I had a conversation this morning about this. He had an awesome idea:

Beyond the stubborn, hard to move people you also have a very large transient/homeless population inhabiting many of the abandoned buildings in the city. Set up a concrete and steel reclamation facility using one of the shuddered foundries and some cleared land. Give the owners a choice to bring the building up to code within 36 months or surrender the land for a 2 year tax exemption and a small cash settlement (land only value). If they surrender the property then tear it down immediately recycling the cement, steel and the rest of the building materials into simple 20 room cement structures that are engineered not unlike a county jail or prison placed throughout the city as transient/homeless shelters. The shelters would feature solar powered LED lighting and in floor heating. They would not be comfortable homes but rather hard generic cheap to operate and maintain shelters that hold 20-30 people. Build a nice apartment into the structure for live in building manager that works for the city for $10.00/hr but rent is included.

Offer demolition, removal and construction jobs to the locals and after these buildings are built offer them building manager positions. It gets the people working and helps the local economy. As the buildings start coming down begin to repurpose the land into useful industry, parkland or residences. If I recall there is a huge amount of acreage in the area that can be replaced.

The scope and size of the issue in Detroit is almost unfathomable.

Why does anything need to be "done" about Detroit? If you live, work and play in the suburbs and prefer that environment, how does what happens in Detroit proper matter to you? How does it cost you except for mental anguish over not having a larger 'Birmingham on the river' to have dinner?

For good or bad SE Michigan has developed into a region of suburbanites, reinforced (legitimately) year over year with less reasons to go into the city, and more reasons not to go into the city. As a result, there is no commercial viability for development, because people with money to spend just don't like the city. So, now the idea is to take a once great port city, on one of the great lakes and at the confluence of a comperhensive river system, and turn it into farm? THAT is an idea that is Pure Michigan.

People here don't like the idea of the city, therefore as a city it is not viable today, but does that mean it is either realistic or preferable to turn it into a farm? Where is the money supposed to come from to do all this work? And if it could be turned into a farm, how is this artificial construct intended to be profitable vs the competition? Will you Royal Oaker pay a premium for crop/products that are made on this farm? If so why not just contribute directly today by lobbying for some portion of your Oakland Co property taxes to be disbursed to Wayne county for some specific use?

I agree we should treat Detroit like a farm, but I say let it lie fallow, let it be 'fixed' by time. It will take a few more decades, but eventually the balance of opportunity vs risk will swing to the other side, and people will start taking advantage of the existing structures and start renovating/rebuilding.

People on this board see hulks of cars that 'normal' people don't value and see the opposite, something desirable with potential, and more important they are willing to invest sweat in lieu of money to realize that potential. People with this outlook are what Detroit needs, and given time they will come, because all you must do is drive around the city, the riverfront, with a Grassroots mindset, and the opportunities are endless. We must wait for people to see it, and then we must wait for them to get started, then we must wait for more people to see them and do the same themselves, and on and on. Time will do this for us, all we need to do is go about our lives and let it happen on it's own schedule.

I wish I had the money to start buying some property up in the region. Maybe in a couple more years.

grpb wrote: Why does anything need to be "done" about Detroit?

Exactly, I wouldn't do anything. Cities die that's how it is. Michigan is a wasteland. There are more important things to spend money on then helping people who wont help themselves. If you don't like living in a wasteland then move. It's not like there are any good jobs in Detroit that can not be replaced. Hell look at southern Ohio there are a ton of ghost towns that eventually turned to farms without the help of any government agency. It will happen just don't force it.
If Michigan legalized pot they would just have a bunch of stoned unemployed people, but fewer people in jail so that would be good.

GRBP and XD are a little short sighted. Yes Detroit sucks and it deserves to become a wasteland but there are suburbs that don't. See, the hoodlums that live in the city of Detroit don't stop at the city limits when looking for crime victims. See, they spill over into Redford, Livonia and other areas. I lived in Livonia and while it was very nice were were less than 5 miles outside Detroit. The crims would rob someone, book through a neighborhood then jump on the SMART bus headed for the hood. Livonia used to have some, uh, politically incorrect methods for keeping the riff-raff out but the NAACP came and squashed that.
The cancer that is Detroit will spread (is spreading). What happens when things get bad enough that Chrysler no longer want to have plants or suppliers in Detroit? Most of the people that work there live outside of Detroit. They WILL be effected, they WILL lose their jobs, the cancer WILL spread.
To say "Michigan is a wasteland" is an ignorant and rather prickish thing to say. Detroit, being on a major waterway and not too far up the mitten to alienate it from the other major transcontinental routes, could (and was) a great city. A great city gives birth to great communities and great suburbs. While there are 900,000 people living in Detroit, there are about 5 and a half MILLION people living in "metro Detroit".
And if you were a little far-sighted you'd see the wisdom in this plan. Consolidate the population into manageable areas and allowing the outlying areas to be farmed and you will give these folks a way to make money (selling good at the local farmers market). Folks from the suburbs will come into the city to buy locally grown produce further helping the local economy. These communities will promote a more tight-knit people, this helps keep crime down.

All that being said, I was born and raised there, and now live an hour away....I don't see it changing anytime soon.

So let me get this straight you are going to import farmers, or the people in Detroit are just going to have a inclination to farm? Then they are going to setup farmers markets like it's small town USA? So they are doing this all by hand? If you used machinery you could farm the whole damn place with less then 50 people. I guess I don't understand your or their logic. So they are not really creating jobs for the intercity residents they are just shrinking the city? If they are shrinking the city they should not put restrictions on what the land is used for. Think of how many landfills you could put on that land. It would bring in more tax dollars and money to the economy then farms ever will. Because people will buy large plots of land, call them farms and take the government subsidy instead of growing a damn thing.

Great City my ass man have you been their lately? That's like people saying Cleveland is a great city. They were great cities when manufacturing was alive in this country not anymore. When I lived in Michigan there was some news store on for a week about some company bringing 150 jobs to Michigan. It was some call center or something. It was the freaking headline story for a week. That was when I decided it was time to leave. There is nothing there when it's cheaper to put a call center in your state then outsource.

xd wrote: Great City my ass man have you been their lately?

I think you need to work on your reading comprehension (and your spelling). He didn't say it is a great city, he said it was and it could be again. I happen to agree with him. I don't know if a turnaround will happen, but it's not impossible. At least there are adults in charge of the place now.

And while I certainly agree that the health of the major city affects the health of the surrounding areas, saying things like "Michigan is a wasteland" is a sweeping generalization that reeks of ignorance. There is a HELL of a lot more to Michigan than Detroit.

Tom_Spangler wrote: There is a HELL of a lot more to Michigan than Detroit.

Like what? The UP

xd wrote:

Tom_Spangler wrote: There is a HELL of a lot more to Michigan than Detroit.

Like what? The UP

Yep. That's it.

I'm not getting drawn into this.....

Tom_Spangler wrote:

xd wrote:

Tom_Spangler wrote: There is a HELL of a lot more to Michigan than Detroit.

Like what? The UP

Yep. That's it. I'm not getting drawn into this.....

I'm just picking on Michigan not trying to piss people off I'll stop. I lived there for 3 years and just hate that place. Don't get me started on the indian casino that took all my money or we will be here all day. Your state did do one good thing the fine doctors saved my life 2 times. So Lansing can stay. You do have the best antiquag clinics in the country. If I got another blood colt and there was time I would go back to get fixed. (serious)

xd wrote:

Tom_Spangler wrote: There is a HELL of a lot more to Michigan than Detroit.

Like what? The UP

Here is what I think of when I think of the Michigan that is not Detroit.

You missed a lot of what Michigan is about. Seriously.

Lansing is lower middle class compared to the rest of the country, but the 400,00 people (metro towns included) here do with what we have and the financial profile of the town has stayed very stable when everyone else was booming then busting. A lot of the economy is agricultural and education. GM is still one of the top wage payer.

Grand Rapids is an awesome city, technically Michigans second largest but it is a real cool small city with great variation of income sources.

Oakland county/Detroit Metro is Michigans economical meat. Big money business has landed there in all aspects. It is now what Detroit was.

Ann Arbor offers a great learning center withing a close proximity to Lansing and the Metro area.

North of Lansing is a huge vacation center. Large inland lakes, comfy small towns, the Great Lakes, Mackinaw, the UP, the Soo Locks, casinos, golf. Oh my god I put golf last, some of the worlds greatest public courses in the US are up there.

Your statement is the same as saying that Florida should be closed because there is no industry. It only has old people and the ground is too sandy to grow anything except sand spurs.

John Brown wrote: You missed a lot of what Michigan is about. Seriously. Lansing is lower middle class compared to the rest of the country, but the 400,00 people (metro towns included) here do with what we have and the financial profile of the town has stayed very stable when everyone else was booming then busting. A lot of the economy is agricultural and education. GM is still one of the top wage payer. Grand Rapids is an awesome city, technically Michigans second largest but it is a real cool small city with great variation of income sources. Oakland county/Detroit Metro is Michigans economical meat. Big money business has landed there in all aspects. It is now what Detroit was. Ann Arbor offers a great learning center withing a close proximity to Lansing and the Metro area. North of Lansing is a huge vacation center. Large inland lakes, comfy small towns, the Great Lakes, Mackinaw, the UP, the Soo Locks, casinos, golf. Oh my god I put golf last, some of the worlds greatest public courses in the US are up there.

Yeah but XD lived here for 1,000 days, so he knows everything there is to know about Michigan. He obviously can't gamble so therefore Michigan sucks.
And to answer the question, no they aren't talking about importing farmers to Detroit. And no you would not be allowed ONLY to farm there. But with all that vacant land there would be plenty of room to grow and many people would grow food. Urban farming is expanding in leaps and bounds right now and has for a while.
Once a real community exists and smaller, populated neighborhoods exists businesses may actually want to move there. Who wants to open a shoe store in an area like my old neighborhood? But transform that into a small thriving community and you just might. Small businesses attract larger ones and so on.

If they turn it into farmland, then property developers will buy it up and turn it into high valued exurb homes!

DrBoost wrote: Consolidate the population into manageable areas and allowing the outlying areas to be farmed and you will give these folks a way to make money (selling good at the local farmers market). Folks from the suburbs will come into the city to buy locally grown produce further helping the local economy. These communities will promote a more tight-knit people, this helps keep crime down.

This is fantasy. What Detroit needs are doers ready to roll up their sleeves, not planners or armchair agritopian fantasy peddlers. And less 'perp jumps on the bus' scaremongers. Redford crime statistics are nothing like say Inkster or Ypsilanti crime statistics which are far away from Detroit. The perception of safety may be worse because the 'hoodlums' look scarier because they are 'probably' from Detroit. But perception and reality should never be confused. The 'cancer' that is Detroit feeds primarily on itself, you may not like to look at it but don't pretend it feeds on you.

I am curious, when the existing population is forcibly 'reconsolidated', will they have gaming rights and casino priveliges the way the other reservations do?

XD, you are coming over as a complete arse writing off the whole of Michigan due to the troubles with Detroit

The whole of Michigan is a wasteland?? Give me a break. I've lived here for 16 years since I left the UK. I now have duel citizen ship so I can live and work any where in the US or Europe. Where do I CHOOSE to live? SE Michigan. No it's not perfect, but very very nice.

I'm lucky. I get 4 weeks vacation per year plus a week at Christmas, so with my family I get to indulge in a lot of travel vacations. Many two week driving tours to destinations and back. I've now been to all but 10 states. Whenever we go on vacation my wife and I always have the question 'would we retire here' in the back of our minds. We've been to many many wonderful places which we love, but they all tend to have a 'BUT' attached, not with Northern Michigan though.

Michigan has so much going for it;
Stunning country side with plenty of easy access through great county, state and National parks.
A very very car friendly culture. You can drive almost anything legally here with very little restrictions
Three race tracks all easily accessible from Detroit, well four if you include that silly oval thing for roundy roundy races
Motorsport is plentiful and easy to find, racing, rallying, autocross, TSD's, drag racing, tons of it every weekend.
Woodward dream cruise, just 40-50,000 cars and 1,000,000, yes one million spectators
Great wineries and micro breweries
All three Major league sports teams (yawn to me, but some people like that stuff).
There are 65,000 inland lakes and ponds for water sports, it's impossible to be more than 6 miles from a natural water source in the state. We used to have the greatest # of recreational boat registrations, now I think were 2nd or 3rd
There's great skiing, compared to other Northern and North Eastern states that is, I'll grant you, you can't beat places like Colorado, New Mexico, British Columbia, but compared with the surrounding states it's great.
Detroit has the D.I.A. (Detroit Institute of the Arts) one of the greatest art museums in the country, plus The Symphony, Opera, theaters, plus many great locations for concerts etc
I like 4 distinct real seasons, that's a personal one some people don't, but I really don't like living in the desert.
We don't get much in the way of natural disasters such as hurricanes, land slides, serious wild fires, earth quakes etc
Best of all being slap bang in the middle of 20% of the worlds fresh water we'll be living happily here as the rest of the country is in a pissing match over dwindling fresh water in the next 50 years.

My plan Any one who's here in Michigan now or within the next 10 years can stay for free. Once the rest of the country realizes what an awesome place it is, they'll have to pay a 15% tax for the privilege of coming and joining us!!

grpb wrote: I am curious, when the existing population is forcibly 'reconsolidated', will they have gaming rights and casino priveliges the way the other reservations do?

There is no plan yet, but the rumors are that if you want to stay in one of the outlying areas you can but you won't have any of the city services except I assume garbage collection (for a fee I hope).
And the entire area that becomes vacant won't be farmland but that's a great thing to do with it. There will be enough folks that want to farm there that it won't go to waste. My wife and I are wishing we had an acre so we could expand our garden, build a large chicken coup and raise a goat. And we live in the city.
And to the folks that thing this is some far fetched plan and is just a pipe dream, how do you think this country (and every other) was settled? Farmers put down roots, shop owners move in, a church and a school pop up and so on. Some of those cities thrive and grow and some don't. Detroit can thrive.

I just want to say that I do not think that "farming" will really happen. Maybe "gardening" but not farming. My reasoning for this belief is the sheer concrete obsticals in th way. Take again my google map example.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=detroit&oe=utf8&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Detroit,+Wayne,+Michigan&gl=us&ei=X3SKTLahJ8KblgfEkszCCw&ved=0CCkQ8gEwAA&ll=42.394447,-83.028467&spn=0.007892,0.019248&t=h&z=16

There are ample blocks and blocks of open lots here. Each lot could be farmed but to really be efficient with the land you need to get the pavement out of there. Keep in mind each of these houses typically had a basement which was filled in, a driveway and a sidewalk. This creates issues with concrete, barely covered foundations not to mention sewer lines, gas lines, water lines, etc.

With gardening you may have a some theft issues. It may not be effective to run a business (gardening/farming) in an area where crime is known to be high. There is really no way to "lock up" the inventory and fencing is not really the answer. You will have homeless residents just a short bike ride away who can easily take all your inventory. Sure, feeding the homeless is a good thing but now we are not talking about a business but rather a non-profit charity. It is hard to build a cities economy on a charity.

I do agree, condense the areas, create open tracts of land and compete with the suburbs and outyling areas when new investment is looking for large plats. Pay attention to expressway corredoors and you could very well attract manufacturing and logistics needs. The trouble here is this "relocation" cost money. Lots of it. Landlords will want to be compensated for there existing property. If you move someone out of a "liveable" property they are not going to want just similar, they will be looking to live in "better."
What do you do about retail (even if it is just a liquior store) who will now not be viable because you have moved the residents out of the area. Do you build him another liquior store and outfit the interior?

jrw1621 wrote: I just want to say that I do not think that "farming" will really happen. Maybe "gardening" but not farming. My reasoning for this belief is the sheer concrete obsticals in th way. Take again my google map example. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=detroit&oe=utf8&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Detroit,+Wayne,+Michigan&gl=us&ei=X3SKTLahJ8KblgfEkszCCw&ved=0CCkQ8gEwAA&ll=42.394447,-83.028467&spn=0.007892,0.019248&t=h&z=16 There are ample blocks and blocks of open lots here. Each lot could be farmed but to really be efficient with the land you need to get the pavement out of there. Keep in mind each of these houses typically had a basement which was filled in, a driveway and a sidewalk. This creates issues with concrete, barely covered foundations not to mention sewer lines, gas lines, water lines, etc. With gardening you may have a some theft issues. It may not be effective to run a business (gardening/farming) in an area where crime is known to be high. There is really no way to "lock up" the inventory and fencing is not really the answer. You will have homeless residents just a short bike ride away who can easily take all your inventory. Sure, feeding the homeless is a good thing but now we are not talking about a business but rather a non-profit charity. It is hard to build a cities economy on a charity.

I dunno, these people do it in South Central Los Angeles. Theft isn't a problem and it's actually thriving. There's a waiting list for plots.

DrBoost wrote: > I dunno, these people do it in South Central Los Angeles. Theft isn't a problem and it's actually thriving. There's a waiting list for plots.

Something like that already exists in a Michigan urban environment, it's called Growing Hope in Ypsi and you probably heard about the founder recently because she helped pass the recent law allowing home made products to be sold at Farmers markets and local venues in Michigan.

Any movement aimed at minimizing the waste of resources is a good thing, this one included, but the intent is to empower individuals/groups in the community who have an interest, not change the community into a cooperative of farmers who sustain themselves through farming. This type of farming outreach isn't intended to pay for rent or a car payment, it doesn't change someone from unemployed to self sufficient.

One of their aims is to tackle the very real problem of quality and cost of food which have real negative effects especially among those of lower income. It is a benefit to the community, absolutely, but it is NOT the basis for a new community.