Dr. Jen Petersen
Dr. Jen Petersen
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At home in the D:  Re-inventing Motown

11/2/2012

7 Comments

 
Picture
I moved to Detroit in October, looking to add my efforts to generations' whose entrepreneurship has forged outbound-ways to private and public wealth. I've spent the last couple of weeks learning the lay of the land. And for me, that means connecting an increasingly wiggly line between where I've taken up temporarily with my aunt in Grosse Pointe Park, and points west--from Novi to Midtown and Corktown and Downtown. By bike, everything is far in gray drizzle, but it seems even farther because of the contrasting terrains I cross. From the heartbreaking hollows on either side of East Jefferson upon crossing Alter Road, to the cautiously-rooted estate homes of Indian Village and the newer waterfront-drawn lofts of Rivertown, I see plenty of signs of hope in the evidence of urban ecological succession. This time of year, fire vines have wound their siena tendrils around brick homes earlier burnt or capsized by the slash and burn of economic cycles. But the proximity of these ruins to a reviving core, my legs remind me, shortens the days until they too are pulled into what downtown tech firms, a thriving arts community, and forward-thinking citymakers see as worth making in Motown.

An article in this morning's Detroit News ran with the above photo and headline, framing a new, 30,000 square-foot parking structure with street level retail, as a vote of confidence in downtown's revitalization. It isn't hyperbolic to say that its Developer Dan Gilbert has an appetite for rustbelt transformation, and is currently setting the banquet table in downtown Detroit. As Detroit's second largest landowner, his family of companies, from Bedrock Real Estate Services to Quicken Loans and several other midwest US-based investment companies, is putting their money where their mouths are. Gilbert's companies employ thousands of Detroiters, and whether construction or tech, are re-making this old city. Needless to say, the city's public-private economic development corporation, has put their support squarely behind Gilbert.

But this particular plan lacks hindsight and as such, future-forward vision for the Detroit it will bring about. For instance: Where is the parking study that demonstrates need for a new parking structure?
The first rule in infrastructure construction is: If you build it they will come.

It would be nice to see Gilbert and Co coaxing a future Detroit made wiser by the past that hollowed it out, once people realized their cars preferred suburban, low density places. As empty as they appear now, if DEGC continues to support the construction of new car parking like this one, downtown streets will become choked and unpleasant--precisely the conditions that entrepreneurs and start-ups hate. Why? because inventive people like taking walks and breathing clean air. And because car windshields block the happy serendipity of safe, productive collisions with strangers, where new ideas hatch. And because dependency on cars makes us fatter, sicker, less creative and smart, and those traits can define a population. And, for Gilbert's and DEGC's retail desires, simply put, people spend more money when they don't have to park first.

I'm only a few weeks old here but I do have a great great great something or other named Dequindre. I suggest that Gilbert invest matching funds for a privately-managed city bike share, a privately-owned streetcar on Jefferson and Michigan, and that he team up with Matty Moroun and hire a top-notch bike/ped planner to replace a lane of car traffic on the Ambassador with world class, 2-way bike and ped lanes. After that, let's see where the feet and pedals are pushing and pulling downtown...Downtown definitely needs more destinations, but if people think they can come only in cars, these destinations will go the way of a quick past.

7 Comments
Gary Schwartz link
11/2/2012 11:22:17 pm

Overall good article envisioning a better, healthier Detroit. Imagining working with the powerful criminal Moroun family for a greater good may be something of a fantasy.

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Mary Zahler
11/2/2012 11:47:52 pm

Good, thoughtful article. I especially like the idea of public transportation down Jefferson and Michigan. But while most people residing in Southeastern Michigan might enjoy a walk or bike ride through the downtown area, they are not going to walk, ride their bikes or take public transportation to get downtown. I think they will require public parking so they can then enjoy whatever is downtown. By the way, did you see that Moosejaw is setting up a shopping site downtown?!

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Jen Petersen
11/4/2012 09:58:41 pm

Mary--how about remote parking lots near the terminus of streetcar lines, permitting people to leave their cars a ways from downtown, rather than search for parking and queue up in traffic jams once down there?
And yes! I have passed the new Moosejaw. very cool!

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Mary Zahler
11/4/2012 10:11:13 pm

Actually, this is already done. For example, for the Thanksgiving parade, buses run from various shopping centers.

Bert
11/3/2012 01:35:33 am

Great article. I hope your ideas about walkable, bike-able space get taken seriously.

I have major reservations about "private-public" partnerships. They seem to me a way of steering public dollars into private hands. The private execs make far more than their public counter parts (overpaid as the public ones may sometimes be), and the workers often get paid less. I work at a non-profit that contracts with LA county, and although I love the work we do, I am well aware that we are paid less than our counterparts in the county (who have a union) and that our execs are paid far more than their counterparts. And that's just a non-profit situation. When the the government "partners" with for-profit companies you get Halliburton, Bechtel, etc. Anyway, you probably know all of this and are way ahead of me.

I appreciate your work and all that you are doing, Keep the faith, sister! (great site!)

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Jen Petersen link
11/4/2012 09:56:33 pm

Bert, I hear you! One of the problems with pub/priv partnerships in social service orgs like the one where you work is that the priv part is always looking for a margin to stay viable. Since the value of their "product"--served people--isn't readily captured in a traditional economic sense (markets fed or created by healed/served people), margins get squeezed on the employee compensation side--that's you!
But I'm reluctant to agree that this means that all pub/priv partnerships for anything anywhere are bad. Transit systems and infrastructure in general are vital to capital's reproduction in all places. A major part of my quest is in building more sustainable infrastructure networks that foster healthy economies--ones which align the social, economic, and environmental bottom lines of the balance sheet. Translation: If you want a car-dependent economy, keep pushing for highways and parking structures. If you want a people-dependent economy, push for people-scaled transport networks.

And so the question I'm addressing is about transaction costs. "Who should foot the costs of transformation when private capital will eventually reap returns from the change?"
In the case of bike/pedways, non-profits have matched state and federal funds for "greenways," (which, I'll add, are branded locally as "recreational" rather than catalytic for new scales of economic activity) to build them in this motorstate. Meanwhile, as there was in LA for so long until recently, there is a tremendous leadership vacuum in the category of infrastructure planning for a viable City of Detroit of the future. The city is near bankrupt, busy reacting in most service provision categories, rather than proactively evaluating how to invest in what it could become. And anyhow, it has been prohibited from allocating and spending $$ on infrastructure projects unless they are approved by a statewide vote. And since there is neither citywide or statewide agreement on the need for bike/ped/transit investments to spur a new, more sustainable scale of economic growth, the question becomes, "In whose more immediate interest is this kind of investment?"

And my answer, offered above, is: "in the major owner of downtown real estate and businesses..." If Dan Gilbert and Cos. wants to keep the jobs and the people in the downtown they're reviving, they'll need a new infrastructural calculus from other places that have managed to do so.
Happy to discuss this more off-line! And in the meantime would be curious to hear about whether you've brainstormed more sustainable funding sources (other than your salary!) for the work you do...

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go to this site link
3/19/2013 04:13:47 pm

“Public Private Partnership” is a very interesting concept. However one thing I am afraid of is that it is exactly and nothing more than that, just a concept. At the risk of being construed as a cynic, I have to say that these “partnerships” are most of the times extremely skewed towards one of the parties.

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    Jen Petersen

    Is an urban sociologist and resilient growth strategist adept at seeing gaps and bridging them.    

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