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Detroit, 6:39 AM
Fri Dec 4
27 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/10/09
The New York Times is reporting on New Geography's ideas. That talks about other kinds of urban renewal, you should read it sometime.
Ben, what's your bright idea to deal with the many areas of Detroit with only a few houses standing per block? Do you object to Flint's plan to demolish 6,000 abandoned houses? What happens next? #detroit
11/09/09
narrator: the young mans hand moves silently up to his imaginary beard as he quietly ponders the immense number of laws and regulations he could seamlessly break in such a vehicle capable of massive hoonage. #j8
11/09/09
Detroit has pockets of greatness, swaths of meh, and huge tracts of vacant emptiness. The city has half the people it's built for, so that means twice the cost per resident to maintain infrastructure, twice the effort to provide services and half the density required for it to feel like it used to. There just aren't enough people there.
Detroit needs to collapse back onto its core gracefully. At some point the city needs to redefine its boundaries and stop providing services to the dead. Pretending that new condos here, a casino there and a couple of trails will fix things is not the right path.
11/09/09
11/09/09
For fuck's sake. Just make the green one available to the public for less than 25k with a few color choices. #j8
11/09/09
And by 'this', I mean 'exactly this'. Diesel, rugged, basic. Don't care if it rides like crap; it's a friggin' jeep fer chrissakes. Only option I want is a hardtop for camping in crap weather and having minimal protection against thieves. Oh, and front & rear lockers.
Giving it exclusively to AEV (where it becomes a $50,000+ toy) is an idea that needs to be stamped FAIL in big, red, angry letters. #j8
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As to the steel wheels, leaf springs, reinforced frame, unique body panels, Dana axles, yada yada; Yes, it's a vehicle with less consumer content, but it still requires engineering, tooling, sourcing and production overhead which all needs to be amortized over a much smaller volume than the regular Wrangler. Even a Tata Nano would be $50k if it were built in low volumes. #j8
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11/09/09
Also, here's an idea, why don't you farm where there's actually, you know, land? #detroit
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11/09/09
1-this is not a Times editorial, or even a Times reporter's idea-it's basically a link to an article in something called 'New Geography' [www.newgeography.com]
Even so, the term "failed city" is disparaging to those who live in Detroit, past and present, and should have been addressed.
2-reading that article, it's author reflects much more on urban gardening plots than any type
of large scale farming, and these vegetable gardens on vacant lots are common in any city. However, the article does contain a certain level of hippie/commune/Whole Earth Catalog-type aphorisms ("...open land, fertile soil, ample water, willing labor..." etc.) that seem like possible wishful thinking, though it does contain instances of people actually doing this stuff-in Detroit. Would be interesting for someone living there to ferret out these (supposed) urban "farmers" and get the straight scoop.
3. I recently read an article (L.A. Times I believe) about people who knock on doors in urban SoCal areas that have fruit trees in their yards, and set up a collective to share the produce that otherwise just goes to waste (how many lemons can one family use?) So, good stuff can happen if someone's willing to work at putting it into action. #detroit
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11/09/09
Gardening is a "productive hobby". I am all for "productive hobbies"
Farming is a "profitable profession."
And you're not gonna make a very profitable profession farming in Detroit, even on free/stolen land. #detroit