A RESILIENT DETROIT?

We have a downtown core and then we clearly have an outer ring, the question is how do you link those two?" Douglass Diggs, interim executive director Detroit Land Bank (in charge of Detroit's downsizing).

Here's a very short post on new twist on a conventional approach (not my usual fare) to revitalize Detroit.  It's also a way to prototype methods of building resilient communities without going too far outside of mainstream thinking.

Current efforts to revitalize Detroit appear to be a mix of ad hoc green approaches (urban gardens, etc.) and traditional commercial development. That's not going to turn the city's wealth creation engine back on. What's needed is a rethink of how a city produces wealth and becomes economically vibrant.

A good place to start is with the urbanist Jane Jacobs.  Her analysis showed that the wealth engine of a city is a bootstrap called import replacement. Essentially, a city become economically vibrant by finding ways to locally produce the things it is currently importing. Within a global environment where physical distance is becoming increasingly expensive (fuel and overhead) and virtual distance is becoming increasingly free (bandwidth and scale factor), the imports to replace will increasingly be food, energy, and manufactured products.  Produce these locally.  The most valuable exports will be virtual.  Simply, make this easier to do.  This is exactly what a resilient community does.

So, the best way to restart Detroit's wealth engine is to foster the development of resilient, economically vibrant, communities -- that produce most of the food, energy, and products that they consume and export virtual products/services -- in the blighted area that surrounds the shrinking urban core.  This turns the city core into the hub for the services that require a large population base to support (from entertainment to medicine).

How to build them?  These communities should be specifically designed to attract two types:

• The globally competitive telecommuter that will draw in wealth from global sources and 
• the food, energy, and micro-manufacturing entrepreneurs/workers that will build the innovative economic ecosystem required for local production.

Both are types that want to live within a resilient community.

NOTE:  think in terms of new rules + Duany's agricultural urbanism + local energy + micro-manufacturing + walkable + ubiquitous/massive bandwidth + local currency...