My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

I have done some research into the redevelopment efforts of Detroit. There is a lot going on in the works to redevelop downtown, which is starting to filter into outlying neighborhoods. There have been millions of dollars spent over the last decade redeveloping downtown, and the riverfront district. This includes new corporate headquarters for Quicken Loans, loft projects, and new retail and businesses. This has begun to spill over into other adjacent neighborhoods. Midtown in particular is seeing a renessaince with several new single family and townhome communities being built. What is more, most of it is being done using the existing infrastructure and street networks, which is important. The new buildings and neighborhoods are being incorporated into the existing neighborhoods. ModelD has a wealth of information on what is going on in Detroit. There are also organizations that are working with residents to create urban gardens, becoming somewhat sustainable.

Of course, a lot of this was going on prior to the economic collapse of late 2008, and in particular the auto industry which Detroit is heavily reliant on. And all is not rosy either. There are debates going on about whether abandoned buildings should be razed as noted in the article, Cleaning Detroit up, don’t demolish its gems. There are also claims of corruption within city politics, and a government culture of getting in the way and heavy bureaucracy, and the high crime rate.

This is encouraging for Detroit, but the downsizing of the automobile companies is sure to have a profound impact on Detroit, and will likely derail any initiative to redevelop that was going on, particularly with the collapse of real estate prices. On the other hand, cheap real estate might encourage people to move to Detroit. These are people who arn’t reliant on a local company for employment. Of course, the same can be said for many communities.

While I haven’t had an interest in visiting Detroit in the past, I do now, to satisfy my own curiosity.

One of my readers, lostfortcollins.com, directed me to this fabulous video on nature returning to the abandoned neighborhoods of Detroit. Now my curiosity is really piqued, and I will add to my plate doing some further research and reporting on Detroit.

The original video is on Current.com

http://current.com/e/76380402/en_US

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I will admit that I have never been to Detroit, nor have I ever had any inkling too, but with all the recent press that Detroit has been getting with regards to the automobile industry, and the state of the housing economy there, I thought I would make a Google visit. As with most of my tours, I start with the downtown area. I immediately became intrigued with Detroit with the overall layout of downtown. All the major streets are broad parkways that are heavily landscaped, and all of these parkways pinwheel out from a central park. Very nice indeed, and a classic layout seen in many great cities. I also like the fact that the ballparks are oriented to the adjacent streets. The whole downtown area is very pedestrian friendly (at least from bird’s eye), and extraordinarily well laid out.

Of course, from the air, you also see the downside. There is a tremendous amount of surface parking lots, and a fair amount of empty space between buildings. This provides opportunity for infill, with a good structure already in place. This of course, ignores the current economic climate of Detroit.

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Now one of the things that amazed me even more, was traveling less than a mile and a half outside of downtown, and there are blocks and blocks and blocks of vacant land…street are there, but few structures. I have to ask myself, what happened here? In most cities, you see very dense neighborhoods fairly close to the city core. And this isn’t unique to this one area of Detroit, cruising around, this goes on for miles.

But why? Is there environmental pollution? Were these neighborhoods intentionally torn down, was there some kind of great fire? If you go miles out from the city core, you can find all kinds of new home development going on (or at least there was). So why has the city core all but been abandoned?

With all the talk these days about sustainability and redevelopment, this is an area where redevelopment should be strongly encouraged, in and orderly fashion. Why is the development in the suburbs, eating up raw land and having to extend utilities, when there is all this land close in, with all the infrastructure in place to support new development? I realize I am taking a rather simplistic view of this, as there are all kinds of other factors such as crime rates, environmental concerns, economic concerns etc. But these kinds of issues have been overcome in other areas, so why not here? I think as a society, we need to take a hard look at our priorities, and take a harder look at sprawl and urban development.

If anybody has any insight as to what happened in these neighborhoods of Detroit, I would love to here them!

One of the things I like to do is to visit different locations using Google Earth. I find this to be a fantastic tool to virtually visit areas around the globe that I have never been too. It is rather fascinating to see some of the various development patterns is different cities, towns and countries. With street view, it becomes even more fascinating to actually get on the street and see stuff, do 360 degree views and so on. Doing this for awhile, it finally hit on me, that I should actually blog about my visits, talk about what I see, and share my thoughts. Of course this will be done with very little or no knowledge of local politics, history and what not. I look forward to seeing the comments from my readers as well.

Recently Standard Pacific Homes of Colorado opened a new project in the heart of Lowry, within the City of Denver. We worked with Standard Pacific for almost 18 months on this project, from initial conception, to project approvals and finally construction documents. We were responsible for the entire site design, streetscape renderings, and landscape design. At only 20 homes, this community is sure to be a quick sellout. Indeed it opened to strong reviews.

This is a project of small homes on small lots, designed for low maintenance living. The lots are approximately 36 feet wide by 85 feet deep. The lots can be small for this front, since they are accross the street from a community park. A driving design feature, was the desire to create outdoor living spaces. We incorporated use easements, where one homeowner gets the use of the side yard of the adjacent home. Careful attention was paid to the design of the homes themselves to ensure that windows do not face onto adjacent courtyards. We are proud of this design, and look forward to repeating it in other infill developments.