The Debate on Demolition
Back about two years ago Mayor Duggan celebrated the 1,000 house demolition under his administration. This incident caused various people who have studied the phenomenon to weigh in on it. Some say that demolition is good, others claim that areas of the city that are seeing demolitions now have more empty housing than before the demolitions began. So what should we think of demolition.
First off, the fact of the matters is that neighbors are almost always in favor of demolition. When I was was a group walking to determine how to make a neighborhood workable with project safewalk, we were told by neighbors which house to take down. Others have written of the demolition crew being confronted by multiple requests as they come to take down one house and outrage at what houses are not going down. I have even seen neirghborhoods stage marches to have more abandoned buildings destroyed.
So clearly demolition needs to take place. At the same time I have seen multiple rotted out, sides falling in or just foundation buildings where there is no choice but demolition. Demolition needs to happen in these cases.
Another set of houses where demolition is without question a positive good is when a house is removed and the neighbor gets a side lot, and in some cases even an attached garage.
This points out one of the problems of Detroit demolition. This is not like some of the programs in south Warren where they bought up houses, tore them out, and then rebuilt new houses on wider lots.
No, in Detroit demolition has just been demolition in too many cases. The city comes in, tears out a house and hopes removing the eye sore will jump start the rest of that neighborhood. This might actually work as predicted if the eye sore taken out was the only one. Too often though the result is not leaving a neighborhood with no more blighted buildings and most houses remaining lived in. No, it is taking out one or two blighted buildings and leaving behind one or two remaining equally blighted buildings. The negative energy from the blighted buildings continues to build because there are still blighted buildings there.
Equally problematic the emptied lots just become empty lots. The city does not try to make new parks, increase the size of existing parks, expand commercially soned areas to attract new businesses or strategically put in houses that have reasonable space between them and have things like multiple bathrooms, so key to modern buyers.
Even in the new growth parts of the north end they tend more towards building new houses very close together than reasonable space between houses.
With such huge amounts of Detroit unused for anything, it would seem to make more sense to repurpose the stuff that is used into a more stretegic use of the space. Downtown may make sense to build up in a close process, but not the rest of the city.
What needs to happen is the takeout of all the blighted buildings in an area, not a haphazard partial removal.
First off, the fact of the matters is that neighbors are almost always in favor of demolition. When I was was a group walking to determine how to make a neighborhood workable with project safewalk, we were told by neighbors which house to take down. Others have written of the demolition crew being confronted by multiple requests as they come to take down one house and outrage at what houses are not going down. I have even seen neirghborhoods stage marches to have more abandoned buildings destroyed.
So clearly demolition needs to take place. At the same time I have seen multiple rotted out, sides falling in or just foundation buildings where there is no choice but demolition. Demolition needs to happen in these cases.
Another set of houses where demolition is without question a positive good is when a house is removed and the neighbor gets a side lot, and in some cases even an attached garage.
This points out one of the problems of Detroit demolition. This is not like some of the programs in south Warren where they bought up houses, tore them out, and then rebuilt new houses on wider lots.
No, in Detroit demolition has just been demolition in too many cases. The city comes in, tears out a house and hopes removing the eye sore will jump start the rest of that neighborhood. This might actually work as predicted if the eye sore taken out was the only one. Too often though the result is not leaving a neighborhood with no more blighted buildings and most houses remaining lived in. No, it is taking out one or two blighted buildings and leaving behind one or two remaining equally blighted buildings. The negative energy from the blighted buildings continues to build because there are still blighted buildings there.
Equally problematic the emptied lots just become empty lots. The city does not try to make new parks, increase the size of existing parks, expand commercially soned areas to attract new businesses or strategically put in houses that have reasonable space between them and have things like multiple bathrooms, so key to modern buyers.
Even in the new growth parts of the north end they tend more towards building new houses very close together than reasonable space between houses.
With such huge amounts of Detroit unused for anything, it would seem to make more sense to repurpose the stuff that is used into a more stretegic use of the space. Downtown may make sense to build up in a close process, but not the rest of the city.
What needs to happen is the takeout of all the blighted buildings in an area, not a haphazard partial removal.
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