For this week’s class (11/11), if you have not done so already, please submit your final project plan in addition to the blog post below.
BLOG POST #4 Compose a response to either the Roberta Gratz or the Brian Connolly article that articulates your position on right-sizing and preservation(300 words).
Redon Rexha
Revitalizing the city of Detroit is a challenge, as a matter of fact, a great challenge. Detroit was once the mecca for workers pursuing the American dream. It is sad to say that this marvelous city that it once was has become a place to completely overhaul. But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. A city that once possessed economic capital now struggling to compete with other major cities economically and a city where today is known for its crimes, violence, failing schools in a broad spectrum. “FORTY PERCENT OF Detroit today is considered virtually “unoccupied.” The administration of Mayor Dave Bing is trying to figure out how to move the remaining residents of these areas out, in the name of “rightsizing” the city. Of course he hasn’t revealed any specifics — and the devil is in the details! Residents are wary: without the money to relocate people and the services needed, it’s just another round of displacing the urban poor” Detroit: Disappearing City – Dianne Feeley. “First, instead of a piecemeal approach, right-sizing should be part of a citywide comprehensive planning effort. As portions of the city are closed down, stakeholders should be engaged to determine what a shrunken Detroit should look like”. Obviously, before down-sizing the city of Detroit and beginning the state of revitalization, the officials should determine the outcome and have in mind as to how the city will look like in the future after all the work has been finished.
In ”Shrinking cities: urban renewal revisited?” Gratz argues that shrinking cities is in fact opposite of the sure to provide aid to ailing cities. Gratz argues that with urban renewal comes the downsizing of housing and neighborhoods, as well as the jobs and mom pop stores that once existed in said neighborhoods. Along with highways comes parking lots for commuters that have now left to the suburbs, and buildings that could have been recycled and reused are forever lost.
The idea of shrinkage: “the idea that cities should close down failing neighborhoods” leaves areas that are not considered worthy of middle income investment are left to dwindle and die. Gratz argues that the idea of shrinkage is not proven to help cities but in fact leaves less room for residents and in fact smaller houses are built during revitalization providing fewer units for occupants. Families are then displaces and sent to neighborhoods that are on their way to be considered blighted.
According to Gratz, these renewal schemes meant to regenerate have in fact eroded cities and is not the right direction to densify cities to make them greater. We are losing the fabric of communities, diversities, small and old big businesses in this circle of creating less density. These things only strive with density.
Gratz argues that it is proved that the opposite type of strategy does work, regenerating rather than shrinking is the most innovative strategies to bring people and business back.
Jean Reginald Saintange
Prof. Inna Guzenfield
Arch 3640
Fall 2014
Week 10
After reading the article Shrinking Cities: Urban Renewal Revisited? By Roberta Gratz, I myself am leaning more in opposition on right sizing but can understand it for my own reasons. Right sizing a euphemism for cost cutting, reduction in work force and downsizing is developers and the cities scapegoat term to bypass any protest from the ill-informed public. The city of Detroit for example during the late 70s early 80s when cocaine and heroin was rampant in derelict neighborhoods the city saw it necessary to have those homes which were vacant and occupied by squatters, drug addicts etc… To be demolished. Many of those homes were “historic and architecturally beautiful building.’’ Like in south Bronx, they’re many cases of homes which were once inhabited by musicians, artist, painters and affluent families that has been demolished by developers and are erased from the neighborhoods memory. For failing neighborhoods, the city decide to shut “shut off the infrastructure” and built to accommodate density and concentrate investment in neighborhoods still worthy of middle income investment. What then becomes of those struggling neighborhoods, the buildings and history? On the other hand I can understand uplifting a community by getting rid of those vacant lots. In Detroit, many homes are vacant and leads to the countless options of refuge the criminals have after committing a crime like murder, kidnapping, rape of the many and it scares of potential buyers, real estate value decreases as well as business. My issue with the city or bureaucrats is their partnership with developers hiding behind their concern for the public safety propaganda to further develop sites and demolishing structural sound homes in need of a minute refurbishing in order for it to return to its past glorious beauty.
Jean Reginald Saintange
Arch 3640
Week 9
The Morgan Library & Museum
Brief history
• Formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library – is a museum and research library
• Located at 225 Madison Avenue at East 36th Street in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.
• It was founded to house the private library of J. P. Morgan in 1906, which included, besides the manuscripts and printed books, some of them in rare bindings, his collection of prints and drawings.
• The library was designed by Charles McKim of the firm of McKim, Mead and White.
• The building was designated a New York City landmark in 1966 (declared a National Historic Landmark) same year.
Building description
• Building material
• Architectural Style
• Alterations or additions made
Adjacent buildings
• Building material
• Architectural style
• Do the building involve with the adjacent building or does it stand alone?
Sources
• TBD
Schedule
• TBD
Conclusion
Ye Hwee
Arch 3640
Prof. Guzenfeld
Once a thriving city which got its name “Motor City”, Detroit today is now considered one of the most struggling cities in all of U.S. The city ranks among the highest in unemployment and crime rate. As of now the city has many abandon factory and vacant houses and buildings all across the city. In order to turn the city around there are two different approaches that are being discussed.
On one hand we have Roberta Gratz who believes in preservation and on the other hand Brain Connolly who holds a Master degree in Regional Planning suggests the Right-Sizing of the city. I am not sure which side of the coin I fall under regarding this situation. This course teaches us the values of preservation and how we can benefit from it down the line. However, Detroit at this point has many places that are just abandoned and beyond the point of being able to preserve.
One of Connolly’s suggestion is that by shrinking and concentrating city’s available resources to healthier area of the city such as Midtown, Cass Corridor and the riverfront. He stated that as of now the resources are wasted on places where there are no development. The problem is that the population density is all time low. People are too spread out. We can all understand how the resources need to heat the apartment building with 500 people is more efficient compare to heating up 500 separate houses. As of now Detroit’s population density is only 5142 people per square mile, compare that with Manhattan density of 70825 people per square mile.
Connolly also stated that while redevelopment is much needed, but said to be careful about what we actually build. He doesn’t want the developers to just build strip malls, gated communities or office complexes. It has to somehow connect and welcome with the people.
While I agree with most of his points, I do have one concern with this Right-Sizing proposition. There will be people left out during the right-sizing of the city. Not everyone can just get up move to healthier neighbors such as Midtown or Cass Corridor. What will happen to the people who are located outside of the right-sizing zone? That much is yet to be seen in Brian Connolly’s idea of right-sizing.
Is right sizing a solution. Shrinking Cities: Urban Renewal Revisited? by Robert Gratz gives us a look at the plan for resizing Detroit. Detroit was once known as motor city. Motor city because it was a large automobile industry town. Motor city started to fall apart in the late 70s. The city lost is industry and slowly the people had started to move out and leave Detroit.
Robert Gratz article discuss the solution for Detroit. The solution being resizing. Resizing is the idea of shrinking Detroit to became more manageable and finically efficient. Detroit wants its citizens that live in it subbers to leave
and to move into midtown. The city has planned to cut of service to the outer parts of the city, which is extremely unfortunate for the people who refuse to to move. Gratz makes a good argument for resizing, but personally for me I am not sure if its the best solution. There will be people left that did not move and it will be a very slow process to have Detroit return to its once booming market as Motor City.
Detroit suffered from management weaknesses of the big automotive companies and it suffered from the race to the bottom of states which weren’t as strong on industry early on.
The city of Detroit in particular suffered from failing to adapt effectively to the flight of manufacturing to both the metropolitan area outside the city proper and to other states. The disproportionate debt and entitlements became disproportionate because the population of Detroit city shrank.
To nullify the entitlements of citizens -especially the otherwise poor ones- is a cruel and unnecessary way to address this.
A possible way is to apply the concept of solidarity and acknowledge that a national-level phenomenon was critical in Detroit City’s ruin and that the national level might / should bail out Detroit, setting a signal that pensions et cetera are reliable. The politics and noise surrounding Detroit were thus predictable.Detroit’s wounds are so clearly self-inflicted that it’s hard to believe anyone takes this seriously. Enough taxes have been paid over the past 60 years to update and upgrade all these fire stations, parks, streetlights, etc., but instead the money was either stolen or used to support unproductive unions. The real decision that needs to be made is whether to turn the entire state over to Ohio or just turn the administration of Detroit over to Windsor, Ontario, which would do it cheaper, and they would know how to revitalize the city. I want to end with this quote by C. Malesherbes “We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.”
Edgar Guaman
Arch 3640 Historic Preservation
“Right-sizing”
Shrinking a city is not a solution to the problem of “de-density”. In the article by Gratz, the author expresses that by shrinking a city it would not solve the problem that it is facing which in that case would be pretty much people leaving the area. I personally agree, that by shrinking a city you are only making the situation worse then it should be and the expenses for shrinking a city would be more then trying to put in that money to revitalize a city to get people to come back to it. The author gave examples of neighborhoods that were pretty much getting abandoned like neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the upper west side and Harlem here in NYC and now how those same areas are bursting with people and development. Why not incorporate those strategies that were used to revitalize the neighborhoods onto other cities for example like Detroit to bring back people to the now abandoned neighborhoods it is trying to get rid off. Gatz also explains that the theory of sub sizing is just that a theory, and when it comes to examples of when it has ever been a success, there is none. When you look into the solutions that were implemented for the cities/ neighborhoods that were being abandoned during the past, you see many examples of success like Harlem, and Brooklyn. Why start doing something that has never been proven to work when you could do something that has been proven to regenerate commerce and people to come back to these areas. All the cities would do with right sizing a city is creating a chain effect that would continue to sub size until who knows if any of the cities is left. I believe there should be way to regenerate and repopulate certain cities that are facing this kind of situation. Right sizing would just be demolishing housing units that may be useful to them in the future, the whole point is to get people to come back into the city, not make it look like the city is about to close down.
Shrinking city case in point (Detroit) is where substantial and sustained population loss have occurred over a period of at least 40 years. Thus leaving the footprint of the city to exactly the same. Which often leads to dysfunctional real estate market and a great deal of underutilized public infrastructure. In case of Detroit what the city planners are proposing for the new public amenities is not going to make a fast change in the city’s urban planning . Which the locals are opting for it will take time for the people to adjust and adapt to the new developmental ideologies because right at the current moment they are preoccupied with fulfilling the basics to carry on the day to day life. Thinking about the change will raise a lot of fear of relocating and paying higher price for amenities and utilities. On the other hand city planners and urban developers have to come up with a well thought out process to carry on this development by creating employment opportunities for the people there also monuments and attractions would cater a major role play in this development. People should be granted what is promised to them which will embed a hope for rehabilitation of the city”s future but at the current moment the downsizing approach undertaken by city”s officials is wrong.
The city of Detroit is desperately seeking a new theory to regenerate, and the path that the city seems to lean on is urban shrinkage. In the two articles by Gratz and Connolly, I would have to agree with Connolly. One of the major problem that lead to the destruction of Detroit is due to the big business industries that once were there and eventually left or ran out of business. Learning from that, and from the fall of the economy, It is best to promote small businesses in most cities due to the fact that if one fails, it does not really affect the economy. But if a major bank fails, federal money has to be poured into these businesses in order to save the economy. There should be a balance between major industries and small businesses. But it at this point, Detroit is so far into deterioration that it has no other choice than to try the Theory of downsizing. Gratz mentioned that there is no evidence that this theory has worked or will work. That is because it is a new Idea that had never been tested. Graz also mentions that deteriorating places like the south Bronx have never been revitalized with “clearance”, that is because it was only portions of the city which were under this condition. In the other hand, almost all parts of Detroit is facing these conditions. I think Detroit and residents can really benefit from this idea. By creating a program to promote people to move into the city and giving them an equal value of their previous homes, that is if they choose to. I think it is also very unethical to force people out of their homes that have passed through their memories and are still in good livable condition. After all this is what we consider “Freedom”.
I understand the problem in Detroit. To be frank, the well being of a community and its rescue should always come before a discussion about preservation. From the start, we have learned that preservation s about preserving what matters to us, those memories that keep communities alive, but never at the cost of the livelihood of a community. priorities come first. I hold the greatest respect for preservationists and am even fond of their methods and work, however some are so insistent on certain projects that it can be likened to the attitude of a child’s temper tantrum. the navy yard project for example, preservationists rushed in full steam ahead into preventing a project that could have very much benefited the community.
In detroit, if those homes are no longer in use and are becoming a hideout for crime, im not saying demolish them, but dont be so blind sided to just preserving these structures.