Or, maybe
Next American City tries to tackle what Detroit's vision could be. It's up in the air. Will it be urban farms, will there be transit, what will the housing stock look like? There are so many questions and so many places the plan or vision could go.
Excerpt from
Next American City:
Right now, the vision for Detroit's future is myopic, not necessarily
in intent, but in scope. Converting abandoned neighborhoods into
farmland could actually be an economic and social boon, but without
being presented as part of a larger vision for the city, it's easy for
such a plan to sound like a massive step backward, or even a waving of
the white flag of surrender. But contrast the image of today's Detroit
with one where a network of compact neighborhoods stretches out between
large agricultural tracts, and parents walk their kids to neighborhood
schools in the morning on their way to the trains that take them to the
hydroponic greenhouses where they work. Americans seem to have a fixed
idea of urban fabric as looking something like a quilt, but there's no
reason it can't look like a web instead.
If there is the political will and the financial might in Detroit to
privately fund a light rail line (which would take a miracle in almost
any American city, much less one with Motown's reputation), there should
certainly be enough energy to create a broad, forward-thinking vision
for the region to tie various initiatives together into a narrative that
the whole city can rally behind. Detroit has everyone's attention; now
it's time for the city to decide what story it's going to tell.
Read the entire article
here.
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