  Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 510 Registered: 06-2007 |
'M' says: A very interesting debate that I'm glad to have sparked. [B] - you bring up some very valid points. Detroit will never truly recover without major improvements in schools and services. And trains will fail if they have lousy reliability like the current Amtrak. And yes, it's difficult to get a major load of groceries on transit. That said, [K]'s right - you're also missing oversimplifying the issue to car vs transit. Many vibrant successful communities have efficient streetcars, trains, buses and bike paths, enabling more compact, mixed-use, even mixed income development. And they don't exclude cars, they're just not exclusively designed for cars either. I've got a friend who lives in Dallas near one of the new light rail lines. She takes the DART to work and to go out for a night on the town. She often walks to the local cafe, park or corner market. But she also drives to the grocery store or to visit her parents. What's so awful and communist about that? | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 511 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: Perhaps I misinterpreted "retool much of the auto industry" in favor of building train cars as something other than what it obviously was, and your subsequent delivery of auto accident numbers and the fossil fuels argument. Show me the statement where I was "clearly against" giving people transit choices. I'll wait a long time because I never intimated that - just the opposite. Your anti-auto sentiments are obvious, however, along with a fundamental misunderstanding of U.S. urban development. Investment in mass transit to places without municipal services, quality schools and other necessities is pure, unadulterated waste. Running a train into a blighted neighborhood isn't going to fix anything, and I'm not talking about the small segments of Woodward that are rundown. I'm talking about the massive urban decay outside the central business district - the bulk of the city. [M], there's a clear anti-auto sentiment in [K]'s statements. And I've never argued against trains. In fact, I'm all for them -- within reason. I've been all over the country and traveled on all sorts of trains, street cars, etc. Nothing is cookie cutter about any of them. The economics of the Rust Belt aren't the same as Dallas, Denver, Seattle, Portland and SF. You're going to be able to pull off a Woodward line, and maybe even the wider network in Hertel's plans. That's reasonable. But to suggest a significant repopulation of this area, or any measurable replacement of the automobile is insane. Nor do I consider "automobile-based spawl" as either bad nor unsustainable. The alternative is Eastern Bloc-style housing ghettos, which were built around transit. Development follows market forces. There is some demand for light rail, but not some massive national network that significantly replaces auto and air travel. A train will NEVER match the overall freedom and convenience. And [K]'s suggestion that the car and our development is the product of some sinister "Big Business/Military-Industrial Complex/etc" plot to force people to buy cars is progressive fantasy. Americans LOVE their cars. And they wanted out of cities because decay, blight, racial issues, failure of services and the inconvenience of transit versus car and air travel dictated our development as a nation. If people want trains, they'll happen. And I live downtown and would love to jump on a street car from Gratiot to Woodward to get up town. But I want my car, too, despite the evils of oil and accidents, LOL. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 512 Registered: 06-2007 |
'M' says: Okay, so we agree that the issue isn't completely getting rid of cars or having completely no trains. It's a question of degree. I'm still surprised, [B], that you consider "auto-based sprawl" to be sustainable. How far is it sustainable or viable for development continue outside a central city? Should we have one giant suburb from New York to Atlanta, or from Detroit to Grand Rapids? Also, what is your suggestion for dealing with oil dependence? Even if we increase US drilling (ignoring the negative impacts of such), the US only contains 3% of the world's oil but uses over 25%. National security experts have pointed to ever-increasing oil use as a major danger. Increases in fuel efficiency have been overtaken by increases in miles driven, leading to growing oil demand. And if suburban growth continues indefinitely, where will our food come from, as we pave over productive farmland? | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 513 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: [B], clearly you have never been anywhere if you think that the alternative to automobile-based sprawl that we are discussing is "Eastern Bloc" housing! And you need to read a little plannig and development history as well before you comment. Automobile-based sprawl happens only through government policy. Since 1950 or so, communitity building codes and regulations have been such that an automobile-based sprawl comminity was the only type of community that could be built. Hence, that's why we have so much of it. It is only in recent years that this has been changing. Laws are being modified to allow for mixed-use buildings, proper building setbacks, pedestrian-oriented streets, higher densities, and yes, transportation choices that include viable public transit. People who wanted to leave cities from 1950 until more recently, never "chose" automobile-based sprawl. Through government policy, it was the only choice that they were given. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 514 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' Says: 1. The pursuit of alternative fuels, propulsion for automobiles should be funded far more heavily than it is - including more money than goes for trains. 2. Sprawl is far better than stacking people in little warrens and ghettos atop each other. Packing people into cities is a bad idea, unless you tax the shit out of them to provide nanny-state social services and basic services. That sounds delightful to progressives, but horrible to the adults. Government CANNOT adequately provide services for high-density cities. It's simply beyond the capacity of the bureaucracy, unless you're willing to submit to a lesser quality of life. 3. Been to China? Visit and tell me what you think of the government planned transit communities. Americans won't take lightly to that. 4. The auto-centric sprawl we got was not because of sinister government planning in cahoots with GM and Ford. It was in response to the market - people wanted cars and to get the hell out of high-density cities. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 515 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: If given a real choice between an automobile-based sprawl communty (whether located inside of a major city or in it's suburban surroundings) and a mixed-use, walkable transit-oriented community, people choose the latter the vast majority of times. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 516 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: The American Dream was to own your own place and have a good life, not to live in an over crowded city. People wanted their own place, not a squalid little apartment near a train station. And when you pack people into high-density places, you don't end up with Utopia - you end up with Blade Runner's Los Angeles. You sound as if you advocate centrally-planned government communities instead of allow the market (i.e. the people) to choose what they want. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 517 Registered: 06-2007 |
'K' says: And retooling a large part of the auto industry to build community transit systems makes perfect sense. We have learned that once an industry in the US dies out, it never returns (see textiles, tv's and a hundred others). The auto industry here is fading fast and even it recovers, it will never be what it was. There will/is a staggering amount of excess manufacturing capacity. Bombardier, based in Montreal is known primarily as an airplane manufacturer. At some point, they diversified and started building transit systems. They have built systems in Toronto and Vancouver that I know of and probably many more. If an airplane manufacturer can build transit systems, it certainly not a stretch to think that an automobile manufacturer could use their shuttered plants to build them as well. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 518 Registered: 06-2007 |
'M' says: Once again, [B], you're taking things to a ridiculous extreme. Compact urban development does not equal overcrowded squalid ghettos. Are the condos in the Park Shelton, the Riverfront apartments, or the Brush Park townhouses all so awful? How about the neighborhoods in Ferndale, Grosse Pointe or Indian Village? That's what we'd like to see more of, connected by convenient transit. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 519 Registered: 06-2007 |
'F' says: The proposed high speed rail corridors are actually pretty conservative and take into account the vast distances of the US. I for one would love to take a train from downtown Detroit to Union Station in Chicago in a couple of hours over the the hassle of 21st century plane travel. If only we could exchange the redundant Toledo-Chicago link for a Detroit-Toronto link... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H igh-speed_rail_in_the_United_S tates [B], I appreciate the thoughts but concur with [M]. You paint with something of a hyperbolic Dickensian (or Orwellian?) brush. The tenements of Jacob Riis are not in the cards. If anything, unless we change fundamental planning principles, we're looking at a future of crushing poverty in 50s ranches, where because housing stock and development is not convenient or proximate, people will be faced with an increasing cost to benefit ratio. what's more I think schools are something of a red herring issue in terms of being an all or nothing to reviving Detroit. There's no doubt about the severity of the situation and it's something that absolutely must be addressed. However, public schools as a notion are under the gun all over the country. In other more desirable places too, like DC, Chicago, NY, Portland, etc. We have to (re)evaluate our society's social contract with the education of our children. And our current predicament is certainly not helped by the government's subsidy of sprawl which overlaid our woefully outdated "home rule" model of local control, pitting meaningless fiefdoms against one another and the city for a smaller and smaller piece of the economic pie. I don't know what the answer is. All I know is that se Michigan is one economic unit and no region in history has thrived without a strong, viable core. Planning for delivery of that must be our leaders top priority going forward. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 520 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: [M], you make my point for me. Those particular developments are the very sort of elite enclaves I'm talking about. It's a few hundred of a few thousand people, at best. Meanwhile, you've got hundreds of thousands in substandard ghettos and no one is going to run rail lines in those places. Detroit schools aren't red herring. Other than progressive "crusaders" willing to use their children as "examples" by turning them loose into the cesspool of the Detroit schools, no one with children is going to send them to DPS. Not anyone that doesn't have to, that is. The DPS and horrific city services aren't something people will overlook just because there's a new streetcar system. No one is saying there's no place for rail, especially as a sort of leisure option like the Woodward plan. The auto industry isn't going away. Ford, Chrysler and GM still make millions and millions of cars and trucks. That's not going to stop. And if you're hinting at centrally planned communities, economies and such, I'm afraid I can't help you. That would doom any rail system to a worse fate than Amtrak, efficiency-wise. Again, I'm not talking about effective, privately-run high-speed trains or even stuff like the Woodward plan. But beyond that is the Japan-style recipe for failure and waste. Bombardier has done well with its rail equipment operations, and perhaps the Big 3 could move into that market, but there's never, ever going to be demand for choo-choos like there is for personal automobiles. Americans got over being forced into cattle-like rail transit a long time ago. Now it's for fun or as an alternative. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 521 Registered: 06-2007 |
'F' says: i'm a product of 1970s-90s Detroit Public Schools. if my parents had had more choice, it's possible i would have gone somewhere else, but i doubt it. i wouldn't trade my experience in DPS for anything. i also have an ivy league education and believe that the quality of the teaching at cass was often comparable or superior. i agree though, the schools are in terrible shape and need to be changed, but it is a regional issue, like transit or planning development or water management. my point in calling the schools a "red herring" is that the state of DPS is usually one of the top reasons people claim for not being willing to move into Detroit (crime, insurance others?). the red herring aspect is that it is too easy to rationalize when for some it is code for other issues people may have with class or race, which won't get us anywhere. if people followed up their demonizing of DPS with a realization that they are complicit in the problem, then i could swallow it a bit better. other examples of cities that utilize central planning: Portland, OR, Indianapolis, IN, Toronto, ON, London, UK. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 522 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: Schools, class, race, crime, city services ... all those are issues, and they trump, in Detroit, the efforts to effect any serious repopulation of the city. And without significant numbers of people coming back, you're not going to grow the tax base enough to fund renewal and new projects - an ugly Catch-22. Little things like the Woodward plan help, sure. I'm all for that. But I bridle at the suggestion that we can turn everywhere into Grosse Pointe and Ferndale. The economic realities give the to that progressive fantasy. Central planning eventually leads to the loss of liberty. I'm firmly of the Austrian/Chicago school and F.A. Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" is on my nightstand. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 523 Registered: 06-2007 |
'F' says: i'm certainly NOT advocating for big brother or even radical socialism, but i would argue that it is in the best economic, social and spiritual self interest of every individual in this region to help realize a strong, vital core city. common vision and understanding can profitably complement individual motivation and liberty. our poisonous brand of jeffersonian cum "youngian" cum "pattersonian" stateside federalism sure hasn't got us far in the last 50 years. | ||
Dcmorrison12 Member Username: Dcmorrison12 Post Number: 34 Registered: 02-2009 |
I have to agree fully with The Nation on this one. Mass transit is key to having an efficient environment. I also feel that in order for America to move forward, we're going to need some serious investments nation wide with rail - whether it's freight, commuter or light rail, we need it and desperately. As for the gas tax, that's an important tax to keep, and to increase. It's a great way to discourage people from polluting, all the while, at the same time it's funding the alternative to driving. I 100% support some sort of a gas tax increase. People need to understand that there is a serious cost to driving - poisoning your environment. Mass transit will make America prosperous one day, as long as we take it as seriously as we need to | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 524 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: But one single community for all of metro Detroit would be that very thing - a large, overbearing, effective socialistic monster. Government does a small handful of things well, if not efficiently. The private sector does almost all of them better, but with different pitfalls. The upside of the parochial government we'd had in this region is that it allows citizens to pick and choose, and doesn't force a single system on everyone. What works best for some people doesn't for others. That's the warts and beauty of democracy and the free-market system. They're the worst forms of government and economics, except for all the others (apologies to Churchill, I believe). | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 525 Registered: 06-2007 |
'F' says: you're right...it would be untenable to relegate all services in this manner. but it is ludicrous to think that we're anything close to getting satisfying returns with the system as is. parochial is putting it mildly. efficiencies of scale and understanding would be realized through at least partial consolidation of detroit and wayne co. also a three, five or seven county regionalization of at least long term transportation planning, development, open space, and water planning is desperately needed. regional facility management (ala cobo&zoo) is another good step. schools, police, health care, fire, and a host of others get (much) trickier and maybe better left to the fiefdoms. but nobody who has any concept of what is possible can say with a straight face that we utilize the economic, multiplicative potential of dense urbanity. our results with untethered home rule have resulted in a petty, pathetic morass. other places in our great country (and continent) do it much, much better. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 526 Registered: 06-2007 |
'Jb3' says: OMG! I'm laughing my ass off. I had to stop reading half-way through, but whoever said that good ole' fashioned conservative fear & loathing is dead should take a gander here. I just have to add my two cents about the car vs. train, forgive me if i'm repeating, but if this is the stupid argument, then let the fricking market decide, that means getting us back to a point 40 years ago before the hostile take over and dismantlement of the american street car system. That also means that if American truly love their cars, let them pay for them and the lifestyle they choose. [B], your sense of entitlement amazes me and disgusts me as a norm in american psyche. Driving is a privilege, not a right. That means no government bailouts and no subsidies for alternative fuels. If you want your cake and be able to eat it too, then you die by the sword, same as you live by it. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 527 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: Entitlement? LMFAO ... riiiiight. Who determines rights and privileges? The "government?" No. The people. And what is not spelled out in law is inherently your right. We certainly regulate rights - the right to vote is regulated. All rights are. Therein lies the difference between Right and Left. And no, I never supported tax dollars for these bailouts and loans. I think it's criminal waste, even moreso by this buffoon president and inept Congress. They can't even get their Keynesian nonsense right. My comment that if we're going to do it, do it right - not the half-ass failure they came up with. Subsidies for alternative fuels isn't the same as a blank check for Wall Street or a trillion-dollar payoff to Liberal special interests disguised as "stimulus." Lumping them together is quite the straw-man act. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 528 Registered: 06-2007 |
'Jb3' says: You are right...in a lot of your arguments. That's what makes your arguments so ridiculously absurd. At what point do you come to grips with the harsh reality we exist within vs. your understanding of a privileged lifestyle that smacks highly of a wealthy upbringing that has translated into a protectionist stance towards policy that would seem right at home within a 'yuppified' enclave that you so strongly protest? When progressive thought turns towards densification, it does so with social justice and equal opportunity at the core of it's agenda. Even if Social Justice smacks of a welfare state, the undrstanding is not 'social engineering' but simply one word that you throw around so freely without ever coming to understand it's portent. That word is community. Humans are social creatures. Within a community comes education, security and sense of place. that's a place i want to live. | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 4364 Registered: 10-2003 |
quote: Ha! I love this argument. I've seen dozens of "Eastern Bloc" apartments that were far nicer than any vinyl-sided POS house in the suburbs. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 529 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: [jb3], I grew up in the slums of Cleveland, riding the crap-ass buses and later the crap-ass light rail. I guess I'm "protectionist" of the auto industry and its millions of workers ... how yuppie of me! To think Americans would prefer the freedom of their own automobile and the ability to get anywhere they need to when they want to ... how elitist of me! If only we could all stand around like sheep and wait for a government-run train to take us within a few miles of where we need to be! Wow, that's some social justice. How well has high-density housing worked in American cities for the past 250 years? Government has proven itself 100% incapable of handling it. Maybe they didn't have the right set of self-appointed elites to better "manage" the people, eh? Maybe we'll all live in little Ferndales? It IS social engineering, nothing more. I can see how eugenics appealed to the Left ... Excuse me whilst I sing a few bars from "Beasts of England." | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 530 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: But please, in the meantime, enlighten me with some commentary on "social justice" (or, as Hayek termed it, ''a semantic fraud from the same stable as People's Democracy.'). I'm always eager to see someone entrench themselves on the moral high ground and lecture me on the necessity of wealth/property redistribution, progressive taxation and other forms of anti-free market rhetoric in the name of "justice." Just like, you know, Robert Mugabe and his ilk. I bet you think Che was a cool cat, too, eh? | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 531 Registered: 06-2007 |
'jb3' says: [B], your hilarious. You've foiled my plot to create the ultimate race of humans. I thought they should be bright purple with scales. Oh, wait, our subsidies of a culture without thought for a future is degrading our life support systems to point where mutations are already commonplace. I should of gone into the health care industry for job security. When i say social justice i simply mean restrictions on investments that continue to mortgage our future away. If you think our little social experiment called the 'suburbs' is a natural progression of the free market, you are delusional. Two thousand years of sustained human life that naturally gravitated towards dense urban environments will not simply be thrown aside for our infantile wants of to do whatever the hell we want to. If you want to do whatever the hell you want, feel free, but only so far as it doesn't affect the rest of us. That becomes unjust. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 532 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: People gravitated toward cities when they needed to, then away from them when they no longer served a purpose. Now that roving bands of ruffians aren't a problem, and we have sewer and water pipes, why should be we forced to live in a city? You're telling me the American Dream is to live in a condo in downtown Detroit? The free market doesn't successfully construct what people don't want. Only government does that, then tries to force it on people. Right up your alley, I'd wager. I see you refer to the "infantile wants" and "restrictions on investments" ... Orwell had your type pegged dead on as destroyers of liberty in the name of "the greater good" and "protecting" people from themselves, eh? Will you be serving on the board of self-appointed elites that tells people what they need, and defines what social justice is? | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 533 Registered: 06-2007 |
'jb3' says: Well...you are the one that is fixated on seeing the world through the eyes of sixth graders reading assignments. My arguments are meant to refute your understanding of absolutes as a means towards change. Your arguments tend towards extremes, i am simply carrying out those extremes to their logical conclusion, meaning chaos. You profess to let the free market reign, but you base your arguments on the heavily subsidizes means of us getting to where we are. That is illogical and borderline ignorant. What you completely gloss over is the simple understanding that order needs to exist to guide chaos towards healthy growth. I'll say it again that you are right in alot of your arguments, but that is exactly why your arguments are absurd. You might have a slight multiple personality disorder. If you go back to my original statement, you'd see that i have no problem letting the free market decide our fate. But it needs to be truly that. Anything else is someone elses idea of freedom. BTW, where do you get off thinking someone is going to force you to do anything? What planet are you from? (Message edited by jb3 on February 16, 2009) | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 534 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: Oops: Light rail and transit mergers upset the unions! http://www.crainsdetroit.com/S hea | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 535 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: Ah, the typical Leftist fallback of ad hominem attacks. When one's ideology is morally and intellectually bankrupt, resort to calling names, eh? You are the one arguing extremes, not I - the stock progressive fantasies of social justice, etc., all of which require coercion and force to accomplish. When progressives start talking about "order" it's usual a sign that liberty is about to take a kick in the nuts. And saying the market should decide things doesn't mean zero government intervention. Even Hayek and the Austrian/Chicago schools don't argue that. But it's a lot easier to accuse someone of being a stereotypical trust-fund Republican than make sense, eh? | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 536 Registered: 06-2007 |
'jb3' says: yup, you're right how could i have been so blind? We should absolutely keep funding unchecked sprawl and then keep bailing out Wall Street for their terrible investments in products and systems that the market is fundamentally rejecting. We should definitely keep tightening our grip on control of increasingly limited resources so we lure ourselves into a false sense of security. Why didn't i see it before? We can build barbed wire fences around our properties and all live in gated communities. Guardian alarm, homeland security and illegal wire taps will keep us safe. Because the alternative is much worse isn't it? There is no middle ground. If the government steps in to try and level the playing field to give the market options that means we will be living in a science fiction world of Blade Runner or Brazil. Oh the humanity. I can't believe i would even consider creating jobs for low-income members of our society that our traditional means of investment have castrated from any hope of becoming productive members that would fundamentally infuse our economy into a sustainable model. | ||
Jb3 Member Username: Jb3 Post Number: 537 Registered: 06-2007 |
'B' says: When you have no point to make, you create these straw men to wildly swing at in an attempt at disdainful, mocking humor? Just trying to make sure I have your tactics correct. You forgot to blame it all on Bush, FYI. How have all those other government attempts to level the economic playing field worked out? We saw FDR fumble-fuck his way through the Great Depression, running afoul of the Supreme Court (and trying to pack it) repeatedly while managing to get unemployment from 25% to 19%. Great job! And LBJ's creation of the modern welfare state was something to behold. Legislating economic fairness is about as effective as outlawing the flu or the common cold. The market will fix itself without limp-dick "stimulus" bills that are nothing more than payoffs to progressive special interests, or the creation of 600,000 new government employees. Now make a Rush Limbaugh insult, or something. |
