  Bvos Member Username: Bvos Post Number: 1593 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 70.228.2.1 |
Here's an interesting amateur study on the cities that are the most "Auto-Free Livabile Cities" in the US. AA ranks 4th nationally. Detroit of course is near the bottom. http://lewyn.tripod.com/livabl ecities/ | ||
Detroitplanner Member Username: Detroitplanner Post Number: 155 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 205.188.116.137 |
What do variables like murder and an A rating for being 250 percent above poverty have to do with being good for carless?? Poor folks are carless cuz they can't afford cars. how many poor folks in Detroit vs Ann Arbor? | ||
Ltorivia485 Member Username: Ltorivia485 Post Number: 2696 Registered: 08-2004 Posted From: 69.17.38.194 |
Ann Arbor is more expensive to live in than Detroit. | ||
Thecarl Member Username: Thecarl Post Number: 806 Registered: 04-2005 Posted From: 69.14.30.175 |
ridiculous...especially when the "cost of living" in detroit could be your life. | ||
Gistok Member Username: Gistok Post Number: 2339 Registered: 08-2004 Posted From: 4.229.105.89 |
That's right Thecarl.... just like any other city or town in the United States.... | ||
Umstucoach Member Username: Umstucoach Post Number: 38 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 152.163.100.8 |
The you-know-what is gonna hit the fan with that comment | ||
Thecarl Member Username: Thecarl Post Number: 809 Registered: 04-2005 Posted From: 69.14.30.175 |
just like any other city or town in the united states, gistok? are you ignorant, naiive, or in denial? how many murders have occurred on mackinaw island this year? last year? year before that, and before that, and before that? how many murders have occurred in detroit in just the last week? i bet it's even hard to find out. murders are so commonplace, they just kind of show up here and there in the press, and i don't know if anybody really knows how many people have been killed in the city this year. dog-bites-man kind of stuff. | ||
Deputy_mayor_2026 Member Username: Deputy_mayor_2026 Post Number: 86 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 64.12.116.204 |
Is Thecarl the neo conservative who always posts on Dyes, or is it Karl? If so, I see how you take every chance to shank the D becuase it happens to be one of the most liberal cities around. | ||
Gistok Member Username: Gistok Post Number: 2343 Registered: 08-2004 Posted From: 4.229.105.89 |
Thecarl... Mackinac Island (correct spelling)... is that the best you can do?? WEAK ANALOGY Carl... | ||
Royce Member Username: Royce Post Number: 1657 Registered: 07-2004 Posted From: 75.9.243.171 |
Thecarl, comparing Mackinac Island's(Mackinaw City has the "w" at the end of it) murder rate with Detroit's is silly. A place with a larger population, wherever you go, is going to have more crime and more murders than a place with a very small population. You over simplify things in order to justify your argument, but you know that we know that crime in Detroit is caused by a series of complex issues that can't be explained away by an apples and oranges comparison. For you, Thecarl, Detroit is hell on Earth. Why you continue to comment on Detroit in a negative way is beyond me? It just sounds like you want to tell everybody over and over again, "I told you so." At any rate, Detroit is a large city with a lot of problems. However, many large cities have similar problems. Some cities have problems that Detroit doesn't have. For example, there is a bigger street gang problem in Chicago and LA than there is here in Detroit. Also, Detroit, as a big city, has things to offer its citizens and visitors that cities like Mackinac Island can't. Theaters, sporting events, concerts, plays, restarants and nightclubs are just a few of the things Detroit offers people that you wouldn't find on Mackinac Island. Therefore, Thecarl, the opportunity to experience more things and to work and socialize with more people in Detroit is worth the risk of death if the alternative is to live on a small island that has very little to do after the tourists leave. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 936 Registered: 10-2004 Posted From: 69.242.223.42 |
One reason for fewer street gangs in Detroit is that Detroit has a rapidly aging populace whose youth have few opportunities for gainful employment. Hence, they leave. It's that simple. Also, middle-aged parents are losing their jobs, and they too move out--with their children in tow. Why are all those DPS schools closing? Too many kids? Not likely. | ||
Haydenth Member Username: Haydenth Post Number: 188 Registered: 05-2005 Posted From: 68.73.204.88 |
Thecarl: Hey, where in Detroit do you live? You've obviously lived here your entire life, with such insight. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 112 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 64.131.176.232 |
Actually, living in Detroit is more expensive than living in Ann Arbor. | ||
Andylinn Member Username: Andylinn Post Number: 98 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 64.141.144.2 |
my friends and i have a cheap (read: schitt) rental house OFF campus, in kerry town in ann arbor. price for the whole years rent: 40,000. now THAT is rediculuous... thecarl, i've been assaulted, chased, and last week the side yard of my house was robbed... and all of this happens in ann arbor... i've never so much as been called a na... actually i've been called a name in detroit, but never anything worse... i spent the first 19-20 years of my life in detroit, and i've spent 3-4 in ann arbor. i don't feel any safer here... and my personal crime stats would say i'm LESS safe here... .andy. | ||
Detroitplanner Member Username: Detroitplanner Post Number: 156 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 63.85.13.248 |
And what does all of this have to do with Ann Arbor being carless? Has the guy even been to AA and seen places like Briarwood or Arborland? Whats so carless about those places? My point was these are some pretty screwy variables to use in determining need/use of car. West Bloomfield, Novi, and Livonia make good carless places too given these assumptions! | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 1572 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 67.100.158.10 |
This so-called "study" is horseshit. From what I can tell, "property crime" has at least as much weight as "percentage of people who walk to work" in determining whether or not you could live somewhere without a car. The author never really explains how property crime and murder are relevant. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what a "transit/poverty" ratio is, and if that has any real meaning.... In other words, lets not get too bent out of shape about this piece of amateur scholarship. And for the record, DC is an infinitely easier place to be carless than Ann Arbor. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 115 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 64.131.176.232 |
The parking lots at Briarwood and Arborland are both a fraction of the size of anything you'd find in Oakland County. | ||
Dialh4hipster Member Username: Dialh4hipster Post Number: 1683 Registered: 11-2004 Posted From: 68.250.205.35 |
God, you people are pathetic. Look how bent out of shape you get when someone says a nearby city is a great city in which to be car-free! Look how you take it so personally! Big fucking deal! The fact is, Ann Arbor has many advantages over Detroit in livability. However Detroit obviously has other advantages over Ann Arbor, otherwise there wouldn't be so many people nuts about it. But to dismiss Ann Arbor as being a good place to be carless is just plain dumb. Anyone who has actually spent time living there can tell it is eminently walkable, great for biking, and has an excellent bus system with clean, nice, comfortable, on-time busses. You can get to Briarwood from downtown on the bus in about 10 minutes longer than it would take you to drive yourself. I lived in Ann Arbor for nine years and put about 8k miles on my car a year, mostly in driving to hang out in Detroit. I seriously only used my car about twice a week otherwise. So just relax, and learn how to let another city have a compliment. It shows you have class. And if you get bent out of shape hearing people talk about how great Ann Arbor is, maybe you should just realize that it is, in fact, a great place to live here in the mid-west. Certainly light years away from living in Detroit's suburban sprawl. To be honest, I'm quite miserable about the necessity of so much driving in my life right now. But I just look at is as a tradeoff for being here. | ||
Mike Member Username: Mike Post Number: 625 Registered: 11-2003 Posted From: 68.41.109.36 |
a ghetto is a ghetto. whether it is in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, NY, LA, or Atlanta. There are areas of Detroit that are safe and others that are not. Just because more black people live in Detroit than in Boston does not mean living in Detroit will kill you. | ||
Mackinaw Member Username: Mackinaw Post Number: 1799 Registered: 02-2005 Posted From: 70.141.182.195 |
I was just thinking about the topic of Bvos' post. A2 is great. You gotta hand it to 'em. We don't need to draw any comparisons to Detroit, and the fact that a neighboring city is a great city makes the region all the better. Personally, I think AA is the best small city (not a small town, but under 200,000) in the state, this comes from a lot of the things, not the least of which is the fact that you can walk or ride a bus anywhere. The fact that you don't need a car indeed makes cost of living comparatively lower. | ||
Detroitplanner Member Username: Detroitplanner Post Number: 157 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 63.85.13.248 |
A2 is a nice town, I was not doing a comparative analysis. I was just looking at the variables used to determine what makes a city car free and found no correllation. What they needed to assess were things such as miles of bike lanes per capita, transit service per capita, density, percent of housholds without cars. Not things such as 50 percent based on crime and 50 percent based on income/transportation. Yes there is a relationship between access to cars and income, but this guy's analysis makes some pretty sweeping generalizations. The point brought up by Dan in DC is good. AA scores higher than DC, but DC has lots of shopping, workplaces, tourist sites, and residential areas that are accessible easily by transit. DC in fact has a few huge malls and shopping districts located right on the Subway lines. Let face it folks once you get away from the university area AA is not that much different than anywhere else. It could be Berkley, it could be Bloomfield Hills, it could be one of Detroit's more denser areas like Warrendale or East English Village. DC does have AA beat, but then again, it should. Its a bigger city with a lot more jobs. | ||
Focusonthed Member Username: Focusonthed Post Number: 295 Registered: 02-2006 Posted From: 209.220.229.254 |
College towns are generally pretty car-free compatible. When I went to Western in Kalamazoo, student neighborhoods were so dense that busses would run standing room only with time between busses less than 10 minutes. Walking was also plentiful. I think this is more a function of a college town than it is of any specific city. However, you bring up the chicken and the egg argument. Which came first, effective transit or transit ridership? Though in this case, WMU buys all students free bus usage. | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 1576 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 67.100.158.10 |
Not so anyone is confused into thinking that I'm pushing DC again. :-) Having lived in both Ann Arbor and DC for 5 years, and been car free in both cities, DC is just a lot easier. If you live near downtown Ann Arbor, or the U, it's fairly easy to go without a car--so long as you don't ever need to go to a grocery store or buy clothes. Once you get beyond the 6 sq mi. of downtown AA, you're pretty much up a creek. I certainly wouldn't want to have to go to Meijer on the bus! I think another factor to consider would be car sharing. That's a new phenomenon that has absolutely exploded here in the past couple years. I could see where crime might discourage walking through a particular area, but don't know that it necessarily correlates to car ownership (or lack thereof). | ||
Benjamin Member Username: Benjamin Post Number: 145 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 216.59.235.129 |
As I understand it, rural and thinly populated areas traditionally have worse crime statistics than urban areas. One example recently struck home to me during newspaper coverage of the Shedden Massacre, a gang-related killing in Southwold township, where I grew up. There were eight victims in that event, but most of them were from suburban Toronto, so we'll set it aside. Otherwise there were two murders in the township over the course of the past five years. It would be EXTREMLY generous to propose that the township has 3,000 residnets. An annual murder rate therefore works out to 0.133 murders per 1,000 people. Over the course of the previous year, Toronto had 57 murders, with a population of approximately 3,000,000, for a rate of 0.019 murders per 1,000 people, almost a tenth the rate. (Someone check my math, please, I'm pretty certain I've got things right.) Can't say I really see crime being among the top two factors here, though. Benjamin A. Vazquez, U.E. | ||
Detroit313 Member Username: Detroit313 Post Number: 90 Registered: 02-2006 Posted From: 72.229.136.103 |
I didn't read the entire thread but I hope i'm on the same page. First, what's wrong with a car dependent city, eventually Detroit will stop spreading and the central city will begin to flourish again. It already happened in New York as millions fled the city in the 70s and filled the outlying suburbs. In fact New York City lost almost more residents in the 70s (700,000) than Detroit did in the past 50 years. But New York also has a vast public transportation system, which was good for the new citizens and those who moved back to the city. The bottom line is at the rate Detroit is going, the central city will be a very desirable place, the best in the region. However I do see the neighborhoods that surround the central city still suffering from under development. 313 | ||
Dialh4hipster Member Username: Dialh4hipster Post Number: 1685 Registered: 11-2004 Posted From: 68.250.205.35 |
Dan, the bus actually pulls up in front of the Meijer. It's a piece of cake to get there, to the mall, to the grocery stores on that bus. I agree DC is easier to get around in without a car, I lived there for five years before moving to A2 and was car-free most of that time. But for the mid-west, aside from Chicago, A2 is about the best place to be in terms of not having a car. | ||
Detroitplanner Member Username: Detroitplanner Post Number: 158 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 63.85.13.248 |
Whats wrong with a car dependant city? Nothing if you can afford your own car. Nothing if you can afford the cost of gasoline. Nothing if you can afford to pay for the impact on the environment when impervious surfaces flood your waterways (Hines) or can afford ventilators for your children because the air is so dirty it burned their lungs at a crucial stage of development. Nothing if you don't mind all of the people killed by drunk drivers who had no alternative way to get home. One needs to recognize that a car dependant world shuts out those who are either too old or sick to drive. It also keeps poor people poor because you would need a car to have as many options at securing employement as someone that has a vehicle. (Message edited by detroitplanner on June 23, 2006) | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 117 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 64.131.176.232 |
I lived in A2 for years and it's not entirely a car-free city. You're basically stranded where ever you are after 10pm on weekdays. Weekends are a no-go for anything you can't get to by foot. And the northern hills are not so bike friendly. The parking shortage is mainly what forces people to ditch their cars. All in all, it's still a cool town, but I'm more of a big city type of guy. | ||
Tomoh Member Username: Tomoh Post Number: 222 Registered: 11-2004 Posted From: 24.136.10.153 |
DialH, thanks for slapping our faces and shaking us up. Sure, this "study" by a "professor" (I somehow find it hard to believe) is based on extremely arbitrary factors, but the results aren't Ann Arbor's fault! Having lived in four Midwestern states, spending time in both Ann Arbor and Chicago, I have to commend A2 for having a downtown area with a great mix of things to do, where many people can be seen walking and biking, many of them to work, because it is possible and enjoyable. The bus system actually works pretty well, despite the pattern of development outside the old city (village, rather). Of course there's room for improvement, like having some neighborhoods outside of the downtown area that are worth going to, but hopefully the train to Detroit will fix all that! But it already has a lot more than most Midwestern cities, even the bigger ones, aside from Chicago of course. It will remain one of the only 3 places I'd willingly live in the Midwest, the others being Chicago and, of course, Detroit. | ||
Tomoh Member Username: Tomoh Post Number: 223 Registered: 11-2004 Posted From: 24.136.10.153 |
Iheartthed, don't they have the subsidized taxi fares in A2 in the late evenings from/to anywhere in city limits? Sure you may have to sit next to a stranger in the cab, like on any form of public transportation, but at least it doesn't leave you stranded. | ||
7milekid Member Username: 7milekid Post Number: 101 Registered: 01-2006 Posted From: 68.61.161.193 |
this study is stupid anyway, did u see the way the guy calculated, i mean cmon now. im just going to act like i never read it. But i wouldnt live in Detroit without a car either. | ||
Thecarl Member Username: Thecarl Post Number: 814 Registered: 04-2005 Posted From: 69.14.30.175 |
Deputy_mayor_2026...
is your understanding so limited that it's more convenient for you to apply labels than to apply logic? your insinuation that i "take every chance to shank the d" is preposterous. the overwhelming majority of my posts show enthusiasm for the city. we have freedom of speech in this country, and one is as entitled to raise controversial issues as one is to give praise. however, you should know that libel is not speech that is protected under our constitution. gistok...
you said that detroit has problems "just like any other city or town in the United States." i picked makinac island for comparison. you lose. i could throw a dart at a map of the u.s., name a city, and you would be virtually guaranteed to lose again. royce...
i agree. this seems like the beginning of a discussion. logic is applied, and an attempt at reasoning is made. this is how people come to an understanding.
well, my argument was that the perennial platitude, "things are the same in detroit as they are anywhere," is bunk. it's hard to oversimplify that stance. one cannot argue with the rest of your statement, despite the shaky pretense.
okay, emotions enter in, facts are ignored and discarded, perceptions are distorted, and dialog breaks down. i was not commenting on detroit, per se, i was challenging the "it's the same everywhere" remark. "hell on earth?" that is hardly the characterization i've made on this forum, ever - on this post, or any other, as a member here. "Why you continue to comment on Detroit in a negative way is beyond me." i know why you can't understand it: because this issue with which you grapple does not exist. i have over 800 posts on this forum. do a little research. i challenge you to establish that i continually comment negatively on detroit. you are too emotional.
epitath: "didn't live on makinac!" and hey, royce, do you have kids? detroit public school kids? haydenth...
uh, like philosophers around the world dream of one day coming to detroit, to push ethereal boundaries of insight to unbeknownst dimensions? andylinn...with empirical evidence showing detroit is safer than ann arbor:
you've spent 19 to 20 years of your life in detroit, and 3 to 4 in ann arbor? can't figure it out exactly? i'm not surprised. personal crime stats? are you even aware of the difficulty that the fbi has had with detroit in getting accurate reports of crime stats? are you aware that dpd is under federal supervision? eh, forget all that. your anecdotal evidence is worthless. do you really think that the per-capita bullets fired in ann arbor tonight will equal that of detroit? | ||
Chitaku Member Username: Chitaku Post Number: 504 Registered: 03-2006 Posted From: 68.43.107.72 |
he gives us a D for walking to work, but yet he fails to mention rollerblading to work! | ||
Themax Member Username: Themax Post Number: 30 Registered: 09-2005 Posted From: 69.246.123.118 |
If you took away the university population, how big would AA's population be? The students are the transit/poverty rate. It would be great if Detroit had a decent bus system. I don't think that's too much to ask for a city. And what other major city has so much of its real estate tied up in street level parking? It's crazy. Chicago has its express lanes closed for repairs right now. The loop was 20 mph on a Saturday. Still the trains are running so commuters can get around. I hope it increases ridership for the trains. We're going to need them when the gas runs out. The coal industry is rubbing its hands in anticipation. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 119 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 64.131.176.232 |
I think the subsidized fares are for students. | ||
Citylover Member Username: Citylover Post Number: 1625 Registered: 07-2004 Posted From: 4.229.132.150 |
The students in A2 are most definitely not the poverty/transit rate; not when the average income of a UM students parents is somewhere around 200,000 anually. As for the bus system it is not simple in that there are two bus systems the AATA and the UM bus system.All of it is subsidized. To clear something up the late night program is called night ride as is administered by a Cab co.The cost is 5$ per person for door to door shared ride service, i.e. you pick other riders up along the way.It goes into effect when the busses end their daily routes and is only offered within the city limits of Ann Arbor.Anyone may use it. At any given time the University and for example Yellow cab may have a late nite ride home program or a ride program from commuter lots or something of that nature in operation during the schhol year.And Yellow cab also administers and provides all the handicap , ADA and senior ride services for AATA.These are extensive programs and they really are the Caddilac of public transit.And they are all subsidized. But they don't service all area's in part because outlieing twp's and municipalities don't want to pay for it. That is just to clear up any confusion or ignorance of A2's public transit.As for the rest of this thread it has been interesting with Dial h for hipster really being quite right on with his take on things. A |
