Tag Archives: Detroit

Imported from Detroit

My favorite ad from last weekend’s Super Bowl was easily Chrysler’s two-minute defense of the Motor City.  The ad aired during the 3rd quarter of the game, generating lots of buzz afterward.

The dialogue that’s followed is often conflicted.  Was this an ad for a new car, or was it an ad for the city of Detroit?  Was it a defense of American industry?

Visually, the ad is stunning.  Tightly cropped shots show active industry, graceful old skyscrapers and works of civic art, as well as Detroiters going about their days.  As Aaron Renn notes, it is an amazing presentation of a civic brand, perhaps one of the strongest we have in the United States even despite the city’s downtrodden reputation:

What this really shows once again is the power of brand Detroit. Is there another city in America an ad like that could have been created about? Even in a radically different style, it’s hard to imagine someone using the power of a city’s brand to sell a product in that way other than perhaps a tourist town or in a totally facile way (“We brew our beer in Milwaukee”). If someone tried, it certainly wouldn’t be nearly as effective. There are lots of cities that have “been to hell and back,” but I can only think of two where you could pull off something like this: Detroit and New Orleans. Not even Chicago has the brand power to resonate like this, showing at least one way in which Detroit actually exceeds the Windy City.

In the comments, Aaron Naparstek notes the inherent contradictions between Detroit the city image and Detroit as the American auto industry:

As pure TV product the ad is phenomenal. As branding for the U.S. auto industry, however, the ad is deeply, fatally flawed. After all of what has happened these last few years, it is stunning that Detroit is choosing to brand itself in the American consciousness with a “luxury” muscle sedan that gets 21 mpg on a good day.

DC, of course, is often victim to the same phenomenon, where “Washington” means the federal government, yet it also means the city of 600,000 residents along the Potomac River.  Detroit, however, seems to embrace this particular association as one of hard work, quality, craftsmanship, and luxury – even if the actual success of the car the ad is selling remains to be seen.

Detroit IndustryDetroit Industry – CC image from Tobias Higbie on flickr

Nevertheless, the imagery is compelling.  From Joe Louis’ fist to the Spirit of Detroit to Campus Martius to Detroit Industry, the city and its residents embrace that connection and that brand – while District residents might instead talk about the difference between ‘Washington’ and ‘DC.’

Things we can take from Detroit

Spirit of Detroit, from Maia C

Spirit of Detroit, from Maia C

…and I’m not just talking about salt, even though the Eastern Seaboard could use a lot of extra road salt right about now.

There are a couple of very interesting bits up on the net recently about Detroit and the lessons it has for the rest of America, for our infrastructure, and for our industry and our economy.

The New York Times has a review of the PBS ‘Blueprint America’ series.

There’s much more to the 90-minute program than simply cataloging Detroit’s woes. It offers a history of national transportation planning in the United States — yes, it ends with the Interstate System — and presents the counterexample of the Spanish AVE system, which in less than 20 years has linked the country from north to south and fostered economic development in the cities it serves (at a cost of increased national debt and higher taxes).

The Times criticizes the PBS piece for veering too far afield from Detroit itself to the larger issues of infrastructure and development, but I think this deviation is both necessary and well-timed.  These are systemic issues across all of the United States – Detroit’s economic malaise only exacerbates the same symptoms that have affected just about every American city.

“Beginning in the 1980s, in the United States it was perceptible that things were beginning to deteriorate, that the maintenance of those infrastructures was getting worse and that the network didn’t evolve in any way to keep pace with the country,” a former Spanish economy secretary says by way of a coda. “And in the 1990s, in terms of infrastructure, it was a country that had fallen behind the standards of any European country.” O.K., maybe not Albania. But we get the point.

The Blueprint America video itself is well worth watching.  Unfortunately, their website does not have html embedding code, but please take a look (particularly if you’ve got 90 minutes to kill during today’s snowpocalypse III).  On a personal note, it’s always a pleasure to see Robert Fishman talk about urban history, and that of Detroit in particular.  Fishman was a professor of mine in grad school.

As the Times review notes, the piece tackles just about every conceivable issue for urban transportation and infrastructure – industry, highways, high-speed rail, urban farming, planning, sprawl, density, transit, divestment, reinvestment, policy (local and national) and anything else you might be able to think of.

The Transport Politic looks specifically at the proposed light rail project along Woodward Ave in Detroit, filling the gap of local focus the Times points out. Yonah notes that the ability for light rail and transit investments to focus grow, of course, requires economic growth to begin with – and the macro factors for Detroit’s economy might just be too far gone for any one light rail line to really have an impact.

Additionally, there’s a very real concern that Detroit’s serious mobility issues won’t be solved by such an intervention at all, given the depopulation of the city and the huge pockets of emptiness, even if aggregate residential densities in parts of the city remain fairly high.

The real issue, then, is both obvious and daunting – for such a proposal to work, you need some big, audacious ideas – and you need to implement them:

On the other hand, Detroit could pursue a radical change of direction in which it closes off sections of the city to housing and compels to move into newly built housing along transit corridors and in the downtown core — basically, artificially altering the city limits to the exclusion of most of the city’s residents. This approach, which would require making it illegal to build or even live in many areas of the metropolis, would increase land prices substantially near transit stations. It would only be possible, however, with enormous subsidies from the state and federal governments to pay for the construction of tens of thousands of affordable housing units. People would have to be implored to stay in the city despite being kicked from their homes.

Because of the cost of such a strategy and the political infeasibility of shuttering whole neighborhoods, such focused growth seems unlikely to occur. But without a well-planned reconfiguration of the city’s built form, Detroit may have difficulty surviving.

Detroit represents the extreme case, but these concepts can translate to any city in the US.  It might be dealing with suburban redevelopment and transit-orientation, but the idea remains the same – big change is necessary.  It’s going to happen one way or another, and the question is now about form and function.

Salt and infrastructure beneath the city

Ever wonder where all that road salt comes from?  A question that’s quite topical today.  Mammoth has a post up on an operating salt mine beneath the city of Detroit.

Detroit Salt Mine

Detroit Salt Mine

John Nystuen has a discussion of the legal implications, acquiring mineral rights for salt 1,000 feet below the surface of an active city.  His map of the area shows the approximate extent of the mine in Southwest Detroit.

Approximate extent of the Detroit Salt Mine. Image from John Nystuen

Approximate extent of the Detroit Salt Mine. Image from John Nystuen

Nystuen notes that the shape of the mine lends itself to the economies of scale in negotiating mineral rights contracts with the larger, industrial landowners.  The main east-west axis that connects these areas lies beneath a rail yard.  Much of this area of Detroit is extremely industrial.  The middle branch of the mine above extends right up to the edge of Ford’s massive Rouge complex. This above-ground landscape has some fascinating visuals, particularly as it ages but remains in use.

The layers of underground infrastructure are fascinating – everything from storm and sanitary sewers, subways, aqueducts, and other utilities – to active industry such as this.  DC doesn’t have the same kind of active resource extraction, but it does have some massive water supply infrastructure that feeds the city’s reservoirs.  Not all of it is active, either – but the vestiges of these underground operations on the surface of the city is quite interesting.

McMillan Sand Filtration site. Image from M.V. Jantzen on flickr.

McMillan Sand Filtration site. Image from M.V. Jantzen on flickr.

This isn’t new ground for Mammoth.  Mammoth’s interest in the forms of infrastructure and the design of spaces “looking for an architect” is fascinating, I always look forward to reading their thoughts on the matter.  Of particular interest is the disconnect between designed, architectural spaces and networked, infrastructural ones.  For some reason, there’s enough of a disconnect where the infrastructural frameworks lack the design gravitas – not everything can be a Calatrava-designed bridge, nor does that bridge alone show the true nature of the network’s design.

Links – bad day for the Midwest

Soldier Field, US v. Honduras World Cup Qualifier, summer 2009. CC image from flickr

Soldier Field, US v. Honduras World Cup Qualifier, summer 2009. CC image from flickr

The US has narrowed their list of potential host cities for the US Soccer Federation’s bid to host either the 2018 or 2022 World Cup – and shockingly, that list does not include the Windy City.

The final cities are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Denver, East Rutherford, N.J., Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, Tampa, Fla., and Washington.

“With Chicago, I think there was some Olympic fatigue,” Gulati said, referring to that city’s unsuccessful bid to host the Summer Games in 2016. “And in this group, Soldier Field was one of the smallest stadiums.”

Good news for DC – both FedEx Field and M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore made this cut, which almost assures the region of hosting some World Cup games should the US win the right to host. This list of 18 cities will be trimmed to a final list of 12 stadiums.

However, the exclusion of Chicago is baffling.  Chicago regularly hosts US World Cup qualifiers, Gold Cup matches, is home to an MLS team, and hosted many matches the last time the US hosted this event in 1994. Renovated Soldier Field is indeed small in terms of capacity, but this is Chicago we’re talking about here.

Only slightly less confusing is the exclusion of any stadia from the San Francisco Bay Area, but at least this can be explained by the poor quality of the extant stadiums in both SF and Oakland.  However, the San Francisco 49ers stand to get a new football stadium in the near future, certainly before 2022 rolls around.  Likewise, given Dan Snyder’s constantly rumored talks about wanting to build a new stadium for his micromanaged Redskins, DC could be looking at a new stadium, too.

Point being, 12 years is a long time from now.   Leaving off two of the US’s greatest cities from a bid that’s meant to showcase not just America’s stadiums and hosting abilities but the host cities as well is just inexplicable.

(advice to the USSF folks – it’s 106 miles to Chicago.  Hit it.)

Picture of Detroit Industry mural. CC image from flickr

Picture of 'Detroit Industry' mural. CC image from flickr

Detroit is another city that hosted World Cup matches in 1994, but was left of this bid’s list.  That obviously isn’t the focus of Detroit’s current issues.  Mammoth directs our attention to a piece by Bruce Katz on re-industrializing Detroit.  Katz looks to international precedents (Turin, Bilbao), addresses the need to Detroit to shrink and shift – even with re-development and re-industrialization, and the huge impact this might have on the shape of the city.

Obligatory DC connection:

Detroit has to change physically because it simply cannot sustain its current form. It was built for two million people, not the 900,000 that live there today. Manhattan, San Francisco, and Boston could all fit within Detroit’s 139-square-mile boundary, and there would still be 20 square miles to spare. Even more than its European counterparts, which had much less severe population losses, Detroit will have to become a different kind of city, one that challenges our idea of what a city is supposed to look like, and what happens within its boundaries. The new Detroit might be a patchwork of newly dense neighborhoods, large and small urban gardens, art installations, and old factories transformed into adventure parks. The new Detroit could have a park, much like Washington’s Rock Creek Park, centered around a creek on its western edge, and a system of canals from the eastern corner of the city to Belle Isle in the south. The city has already started on the restoration of the Detroit River waterfront, largely bankrolled by private philanthropy. The city has created a new “land bank,” which can take control of vacant and derelict properties and start the process of clearing land, remediating environmental contamination, and figuring out what to do next with the parcel, whether that’s making it into a small park, deeding it to a neighbor to create a well-tended yard, or assembling large tracts of land for redevelopment or permanent green space.

Also from mammoth, Rob Holmes takes a peek at the massive scale of some new solar infrastructure, linking to this post on the sprawling SEGS facility in California – conveniently located next to the world’s largest boron mine for scale comparisons.

Similarly, the scale comparisons remind me of a video recently shared with me about mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.  The video comes from Yale University’s Environment360. the 20 minute video is extraordinarily well shot and edited, and well worth a watch.  Given DC’s proximity to Appalachia and our (relative) reliance on coal power in this region, it’s definitely of interest to those of us in the Mid Atlantic region.

At a bare minimum, the images in the video alone are worth a watch.

When I think of tools for urban living, GMC trucks aren’t the first thing that come to my mind.  I guess using that kind of comparison is like saying a jackhammer is a tool for hanging picture frames around the house.

Portland hasn’t seen big shifts in travel modes recently, as Jarrett Walker notes.  However, Jarrett and a few of his trusty commenters seem to have a bead on to the potential cause – relatively cheap parking.

In other recent work we’ve been doing, we’ve repeatedly seen that parking price is the most powerful locally-controlled lever for shifting people out of single-occupant cars, in the absence of more direct congestion charges.  Increases in parking costs drive big shifts to transit or other options.

In my experience working on various transportation demand management programs, this is absolutely true.  Since TDM programs do not usually have the scope to implement congestion pricing, parking pricing is the single biggest contributor to mode shifts.