Via Wikipedia
The Dequindre Cut is a below-grade pathway, formerly a Grand Trunk Western Railroad line,[1] located on the east side of Detroit, Michigan just west of St. Aubin Street. Much of the Cut has been converted to a greenway; the colorful graffiti along the pathway has been left in place.[2]
The railroad line that once ran through the Dequindre Cut runs roughly northwest/southeast at street level through Hamtramck and on to Royal Oak.[3] The Cut begins south of Wilkins Street (near Mack Avenue and Eastern Market) and continues at 25 feet beneath grade until it enters the riverfront area south of Jefferson Avenue.[3]
A few of us transformed three parking spaces in downtown Lansing into a park for a day.
A brief update on some of the initiatives across the state that are working with NSP funds to combat blight, abandonment and foreclosure in Michigan cities.
Here’s a quick and dirty video I made late last month at a downtown rental rehab project in Mason, Michigan. The camera work is a little shaky, but hopefully I’ll get a tripod for any future videos.
Photo: Michigan Avenue
Necessity: Michigan Avenue Corridor Improvement
Michigan Avenue is Lansing’s premier corridor because it’s the Capital City’s welcome mat. Often it’s our first and only chance at making a good impression and we should jump at any opportunity to invest in and improve upon it. Not only is it Lansing’s only real traditional urban corridor, it’s also the road to State. It should represent a renaissance of thought and the renewed interest in cities that is washing over this great state of Michigan, recession or not. Lucky for us, Lansing is currently in the process of designing a new comprehensive plan. With the city’s Workshop in a Box program, residents can hold their own community input sessions and help shape this corridor and the rest of the city into the kind of place where people want to live, work and play. For this reason I want to focus on an issue that keeps coming up time and time again.
Some residents view Michigan Avenue as the ideal candidate for a new light rail line. Put frankly, neither residents nor the corridor are anywhere close to being ready for light rail. Even with CATA’s #1 bus boasting Lansing’s highest ridership and most frequent service. At current ridership rates, a light rail line would be awash in red ink, even with heavy subsidy. But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t plan for the success of a light rail line in the future.
What’s the deal? Wouldn’t ridership increase if we could only build it? Wouldn’t the very presence of a shiny new light rail line get people out of their cars? Not a chance. The way people are talking these days, it’s like light rail is the new gospel. The real problem is that the transportation planning paradigm of the past 60 years or so has been its focus on mobility instead of accessibility. The difference is not simply semantics. Transportation engineers often ask the wrong question altogether. Instead of asking how we can decrease the cost per mile of transit, they should be asking how we can decrease the cost per value destination. After all, transit is a derived demand because we don’t consume it for the sake of itself but instead we use it to access other goods (work, the grocery store, etc). So the closer we can bring people and value destinations together, the more likely light rail will succeed along Michigan Avenue. This is ultimately an issue of land use. It’s time to start thinking about destinations and less about automobility.
Currently the population density along Michigan Avenue isn’t great enough to support light rail. But if the city and its residents can get creative, the corridor could be a dense and thriving place (with a new light rail line to boot!). The city should acquire as many vacant and underutilized properties as it can between downtown and East Lansing, rezoning most of them into Planned Unit Developments (PUDs). This should encourage more dense, mixed-use development along the corridor and (most importantly) get people living there. One possibility to accelerate growth is to give away some of the property to MSU with the requirement that it build student and faculty housing. I’m sure East Lansing wouldn’t have too much of a problem with this since the city is pushing students out to exurban Bath Township. And since the corridor is already serviced by CATA #1, surface parking requirements should be relaxed considerably to insure that only those truly dedicated to the urban experience take advantage of the new housing. Bike lanes and zipcars would make it a whole lot easier for people to make the decision to go urban. New residents would fuel new businesses and tranform all of Michigan Avenue, from the Capitol to East Lansing, into a value destination. The trains will follow.
Atelier Christian de Portzamparc
On March 17, 2009 the New York Times published a story online about the 10 new master plan proposals for the city of Paris and the surrounding region. An excerpt:
The results of a nine-month study commissioned by President Nicolas Sarkozy, the proposals aim to transform Paris and its surrounding suburbs into the first sustainable “post-Kyoto city,” a reference to the treaty on climate change, with an expanded Métro system and sprawling new parks.
The government has yet to say how it would raise the money to build this new city. And Mr. Sarkozy’s opponents, who have sometimes dismissed him as “President Bling-Bling,” have questioned whether this is anything more than an elaborate publicity stunt.
But even if none of the proposals are ever built, they show a daring that has not been seen in a Western city for decades. The teams range in experience from well-established international stars like Richard Rogers and Christian de Portzamparc to French architects who are just beginning their careers. All forsook flashy imagery for a deep analysis of the city’s diverse communities and the fraying tissue that binds them together. At the very least, the results should force a radical reappraisal of Paris’s identity. The enchanted city most of us know through holidays and films is a compact metropolis of roughly two million people that lies within the périphérique, the elevated freeway that encircles the old city. Its pretty medieval streets and broad boulevards are held up as a model of the ideal city.
But for decades the vast majority of Parisians have lived in the generic apartment blocks and squalid housing projects that make up most of the suburbs. These include the poor immigrant neighborhoods that erupted in violence in 2005.
The aim of the study was twofold: to create a plan for a greener, more sustainable city, and to break down the isolation between the outlying neighborhoods and the historic center. The most thought-provoking designs operate on multiple levels, reaching beyond the issue of sustainability to address deeply entrenched social ills.
nytimes.com| architecture: A New Paris, as Dreamed by Planners
What I found to be one of the more daring (yet inspiring) of the plans was one that incorporated a Maglev train into the périphérique, which would link to London and Brussels via Eurostar.
Another plan called for a greenbelt surrounding the city, with all new development concentrated inside the greenbelt to curb sprawl and increase density:
Other plans are more poetic. Jean Nouvel proposes creating a green belt that would circle the entire city. All future construction would be concentrated inside this belt, adding density to what are now sprawling, isolated communities. New towers would punctuate some of the outlying boulevards, adding visual markers where there are none. The outer ring would become a sort of 620-mile-long community garden, with residents tending their plots along an endless string of parks and fields. The idea is to give a powerful identity to the most anonymous parts of the city.
nytimes.com| architecture: A New Paris, as Dreamed by Planners
I realize that Paris is not only playing in a different field than Lansing, but playing an entirely different game. But what does this say about what Lansing and Michigan in general can do to move forward into the 21st century economy? If we continue to try and catch up with the status quo, where will that leave us? But if Michigan moved forward with a new vision to the likes of any of the Paris plans and toward a bold new future, how could we be anything less than awe-inspiring? Entrepreneurs, businesses and people wanting to be a part of a lifestyle, wanting to grow toward something different and sustainable and unlike anything ever seen in the country, well, they’d come knocking on our door.
A couple of days ago when I was in Midland for an interview I decided to stop into Barnes & Noble. I feel sort of bad for shopping there, but I don’t know of any good independent bookstores in the area, so I guess I don’t really have a choice. At any rate, they were having a “Buy Two, Get One Free” sale on all B&N Classics. They were pushing some of their pop lit on a center display, but I found a loophole. Any and all of their B&N Classics counted toward the sale, regardless if they were labeled or not. I took advantage and picked up a few things that I’ve been meaning to read. As I walked around I thought back to freshman year when I came back to school, when I took an American studies class. Even after finishing my degree and taking a load of upper level classes, I still consider it one of the most thought provoking of my college career. The class content began at the settling of the North American continent, and covered through the Human Rights Movement, covering everything from politics and economics, to popular thought and music. Through all of the messes of our history I still managed to see a lot of great thought that has come out of American history. A few of my favorite time periods are those that tried the collective character, such as the American Revolutionary and its competing political philosophies, the Great Westward Expansion with its rugged individualism, the Industrial Revolution with Robber Barons vs. the labor movement, and The Jazz Age, where Americans were pushing the rigid boundaries of culture, music, and sex. I have probably the most fascination with Jazz Age literature, so I picked up another book by F. Scott Fitzgerald. But I also wanted to know more about American political philosophy so I picked up Common Sense and Other Writings by Thomas Paine. I’ve just begun to delve into this masterpiece, but I wanted to take a few minutes this morning, while the house is quiet and it’s still dark outside, to post a few quotes from what I’ve read. It’s not so much a matter of Thomas Paine being profound. Perhaps at the time he was, but I can’t even begin to speculate as to how many social philosophers since his time have been influenced by his work. Instead, it is the manner in which he makes his arguments. He was a very talented and persuasive writer.
Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which would supercede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but HEaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other: and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.
Some convenient tree will afford them a State House, under the branches of which the whole Colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of Regulations and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In this first parliament every man by natural right will have a seat.
But as the Colony encreases, the public concerns will encrease likewise, and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion as at first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole body would act were they present. if the colony continue encreasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts, each part sending its proper number: and that the elected might never form to themselves an interest separate from the electors, prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often: becaues as the elected might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the electors in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflection of not making a rod for themselves. And as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every part of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other, and on this, (not on the unmeaning name of kink,) depends the strength of government, and the happiness of the governed.
Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sounds; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, ’tis right.
I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered; and with this maxim in view I offer a few remarks on the so much boasted constitution of England. That it was noble for the dark and slavish times in which it was erected , is granted. When the world was overrun with tyranny the least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue. But that it is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise, is easily demonstrated. Absolute governments, (tho’ the disgrace of human nature) have this advantage with them, they are simple; if the people suffer, they know the head from which their suffering springs; know likewise the remedy; and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures. But the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies; some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine. I know it is difficult to get over local or long standing prejudices, yet if we will suffer ourselves to examine the component parts of the English Constitution, we shall find them to be the base remains of two ancient tyriannies, compounded with some new Republican materials. First.–The remains of Monarchical tyranny in the person of the King. Secondly.–The remains of Aristocratical tyranny in the persons of the Peers. Thirdly.–The new Republican materials, in the persons of the Commons, on whose virtue depends the freedom of the State. To say that the constitution of England is an union of three powers, reciprocally checking each other, is farcical; either the words have no meaning, or they are flat contradictions. To say that the Commons is a check upon the King, presupposes two things: First.–That the King is not to be trusted without being looked after; or in other words, that a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy. Secondly.–That the Commons, by being appointed for that purpose, are either wiser or more worthy of confidence than the Crown. But as the same constitution which gives the Commons a power to check the King by withholding the supplies, gives afterwards the King a power to check the Commons, by empowering him to reject their other bills; it again supposes that the King is wiser than those whom it has already supposed to be wiser than him. A mere absurdity! There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of Monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king shuts him from the World, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly; wherefore the different parts, by unnaturally opposing and destroying each other, prove the whole character to be absurd and useless.
