#parking

Detroit has been through decades of social and financial problems ever since the city slowly slumped into oblivion and collapsing on itself until bankruptcy. The auto industry fueled the city’s growth for many years starting at the beginning of the 20th century with the advent of the automobile.

Fast-forward to the 21st century and everything is gone from the city once thrived with the biggest industry of the West. But it wasn’t enough for Detroit as it gamble its entire economy on cars rather than diversifying the industry investing in different fields. By the time politicians realized that it was too late.

We can trace back how the city developed into something fit only for those having the ability to afford cars, while the rest of those who relied on walking were left out of the equation for good. Today Detroit still lags behind in having an effecting public transportation system to make a significant impact, but it’s very hard when the entire city was developed inside the car-culture.

Three freeways isolate downtown from the rest transforming it in a citadel.

One of the main issues that affected the urban development and prevented the city from adopting a better road system, was the the layout of the freeway system that chokes downtown Detroit. The John C. Lodge, Fisher, and Chrysler freeways surround the urban center isolating it from the rest of the city.

Artificial barriers in the form of roads, ramps, collectors, are responsible for creating specific condition among neighbors, mostly negatively impacting hundreds of blocks at the time. Developers find this method very useful to separate high and low values housing so it won’t affect the pricing market, thus ensuring specific parts of town remain within a specific yield of profits.

Another important issue is the large presence of parking lots surface downtown. Highlighted in red the volumes dedicated to car parking are spread out comprising a large portion of the city core. Whenever cars have a place to be stored they will create incentive to use them everywhere as an extension of people’s lives that cannot be excluded.

The two portions in blue represent large areas of vacant lots that once hosted buildings. Today they leave tremendous gaps between blocks that reminds of Berlin in 1946 after the rubble removal. Focusing on the site located on the top-left corner we can comprehend how much Detroit has been neglected.

The highlighted area has an approximate dimension of 176,900 square meters of vacancy (plus/minus the presence of some buildings).

A close up of the area shows how depressing the area appears. Temporarily parking lots are placed where once buildings stood as there is no certainty of the urban plan for this area.

Uptown faces the same issues of large presence of parking areas that make up for a large potion of the space. The gargantuan suburb conveys tens of thousands of drivers every day requiring areas to leave their vehicles somewhere. Although commercial and public volumes required park spots for obvious reasons, they still represent a small percentage compare do the rest.

The red area represents the high-density portion of Detroit while the yellow one is low-density with suburban-type zones. This has been impacting the city for decades: everything revolves around vehicle ownership and those who don’t cannot rely on the weak public transport system or downtown residency.

Crime and high rents have pushed people away from the high-density areas towards the suburbs. Downtown is a corporate fortress that is ‘protected’ by a ring of freeways which doesn’t allow for a smooth transition towards the fringes.

The sprawl of Detroit -like many American metropolis- has impacted the life style of many citizens who are subjugated to the condition their neighbors dwell. In the last 20 years the city has suffered from crime sprees, major city corruption, financial collapse.

To build and to maintain such enormous suburbs required billions of dollars that cannot be made back in tax revenues: low-density neighbors don’t yield enough property taxes. The city was lost with a 20 billion dollar budget gap in 2013 after declaring bankruptcy.

The only way for Detroit to swamp itself out is to drastically rethink its urban design by reshaping vacant lots and abandoned neighbors. Building hi-density zone with enough green and public surface will create a major investment for the future.

At the same time public transportation must be made bigger than it is today, so streetcars and buses will have to increase in fleet size and stop network to provide access to everybody from the city fringes to downtown.

Illustration by Galina Tachieva repairing the sprawl.

Retrofitting neighbors has the best ability to render any city a place worth caring for. Once dead malls and flat surfaces are reborn building gracious communities and promoting pedestrian activity, then everything can become precious again . Areas that are well lit and offer rich patterns in their design will always engage the eye placing more importance in its care and existence.

Detroit can surely use what New Urbanism has done to other cities by reclaiming unused volumes and structures to increase their values by tailoring places around people first and cars second. Redeveloping city blocks opens for new opportunities of business and residential units for mixed using, departing from the old concept of leaving the housing pod with the car just to make small purchases.

Loop Lots Favor Shoppers Over Workers

April 3, 1946: The Minneapolis City Council license committee met to discuss complaints from downtown workers that they were being discriminated against by parking lot operators in favor of the shopping crowd. Operators said the short-time occupant meant more revenue and insisted it would ease the city’s traffic congestion. The idea was that by refusing to open the lots until 9:30 or 10 a.m., downtown workers would be discouraged from driving to work. City engineer Hugo Erickson, said he was not yet sure of the effect, but was interested in seeing if it would impact downtown streets.

Photo P47032 of a patron not being allowed to park in a half empty lot because of quotas to maximize profit, from the Minneapolis Newspaper Photograph Collection in the Hennepin County Library Digital Collections.

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