Detroit Plans Airport City

But will the aerotropolis be ‘cool’?

Cities have always developed around modes of transit, whether they were key crossroads, strategic port harbors and rivers, or major railroad depots. Why not around airports? That question is being asked more often as the volume of air travel continues to increase and airports and the land around them become increasingly urbanized. John D. Kasarda, a professor at University of North Carolina’s business school who has written widely on the topic, described these emerging cities in the May 2006 edition of the magazine The Next American City. Noting that large airports now “have the density of highway and transit connections that are usually associated only with CBDs” Kasarda predicts that although these “Aerotropoli” have evolved spontaneously to date, these new cities “will require localized infrastructure planning of unprecedented scale” if they are to solve — or prevent — serious development problems.

Airports have long been recognized as engines of local economic growth. Urban Age magazine noted in 1999 that between 1960 and 1995, air transport increased at an annual rate of 11.1 percent for cargo and 8.9 percent for passengers, nearly triple the rate of overall economic growth. According to their statistics, over 1,000 jobs are created for every 1 million passengers, and the article notes the wide variety of “hotels, exhibition halls, businesses and conference centers” that choose to locate near airports.

In few places could an airport assume a larger role in economic and urban development than Detroit, Michigan. Thanks largely to a declining manufacturing sector Michigan’s unemployment rate has been higher than the national average since 2000. In August, Michigan was tied with Mississippi for the highest level of unemployment in the nation – 7.1%. Growth in the “knowledge-based” sector has lagged behind the national average. The state’s Life Sciences Corridor is a state effort to cultivate a potentially lucrative new industry. Inspired by the theories of Richard Florida that knowledge-industry workers (he calls them the “creative class“) are attracted to high quality cities, the state’s Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm launched a Cool Cities Initiative in 2004 to attract, retain, and potentially incubate the workers of the creative economy. Google’s recent decision to locate a major employment center in Ann Arbor was viewed by state leaders as a vindication of this new, urban-based approach to economic development.

Although Florida’s controversial theories can be somewhat ethereal, the economic impact of Michigan’s largest airport are refreshingly concrete. A recent study released this year by the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport and the University of Michigan – Dearborn concluded the airport’s 36 million passengers were responsible for 70,000 jobs and demand for $7.6 billion in goods and services in the state. The airport is not only a major domestic hub but also handles over 2.8 million international passengers, making it the 11th largest in North America and 20th largest in the world in 2005. The airport opened the new McNamara Terminal in 2002, which features 122 gates, a 400-room luxury hotel, and in-terminal automated tram system. Another new 26-gate terminal is expected to open in 2008.

For these reasons local government officials together with Prof. Kasarda and the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning sponsored a 3-day design charrette in January 2006 titled “Aerotropolis, A new city: YIP/DTW” to create designs for a new city near the airport. The New York Times recently described the charrette in the context of increased activity at Willow Run Airport — a small airport used for charter flights located just down the road from the much larger DTW — in the story, “Living at the Crossroads, Working There, Too” The article reports that over 160,000 passengers will use the Willow Run airport on charter and corporate shuttle flights this year. A new, airport-based city is a “logical step for Detroit,” points out the Times, noting development in the city has “followed the transportation innovations — sail, steam, rail, auto and jet — of every era stretching back to the city’s founding in 1701.”

What ideas did the students come up with? Although the posted presentations contain little explanatory text, they give some idea of each team’s general approach. The “Supersonics” team proposed a variety of development in the region including both a dense, transit oriented development and luxuriously suburban plans for use-segregated superblocks reminiscent (for me, at least) of Detroit’s land use plans from the 1940s and 50s. The “777′s” plan seems the most practical – it preserves a greenway along local waterways and identifies a corridor for development between the two airports along a proposed transit line. The “Stratocruisers” propose infill development for the small cities in the area in addition to a compact Metro City aligned carefully near both freeways and transit, just across I-94 from the airport. For reference they have slides superimposing portions of Paris and Washington, D.C. over the planned site. Their design for Metro City contains a gridiron with a radial avenue and two circles inspired by the Baroque city planning tradition that shapes Paris and Washington.

Although I think the exercise is worthwhile, the plans all seem a little to prescribed to be either economically or politically feasible. The Times points out the plans will require the municipalities adopt a “regional master land use plan, common architectural standards and zoning that mandates the look and location of buildings.” The Detroit Free Press did a good job last April of analyzing some of the obstacles to realizing such a bold, large-scale vision. My conception of planning tries to steer clear of this sort of government micromanaging in favor of providing for a more general framework for growth. Also, the student’s presentations do not mention the state’s Cool Cities program, which has the stated goals of “Building vibrant, energetic cities that attract jobs, people and opportunity to our state.” Many of the greenfield development schemes in the plans seem destined to produce sterile, “no-place places,” (to quote the phrase my girlfriend Libby used about the project) instead of authentic, dynamic cities. I don’t think the creative class is itching to move into master-planned superblocks in suburban Michigan. The dense transit-based developments might be more successful, but if built would likely replicate the much-criticized synthetic feel of other New Urbanist projects like Celebration or The Kentlands.

If local leaders are serious about cultivating an Aerotropolis, both feasibility and “Cool Cities” criteria demand design decisions should be based firmly around existing urban infrastructure and unique qualities of the region. Sinuous Belleville Lake could present some interesting development options given its proximity to both airports and the region’s two major highways – I-94 and I-275. Indeed, the 777′s plan proposes a development just across the lake from the existing city of Belleville. Unfortunately, the current proposed route for a light rail connection between Detroit and Ann Arbor runs well north of either airports, directly through the city of Wayne, where the Stratocruisers’ plan calls for 400,000 sq ft of building footprints on a wedge of land currently occupied by low-density uses.

If local leaders want to cultivate urban development around DTW, I think the best path would avoid Brasília-like suburban design, and focus on creating a framework plan that protects open space and guides growth towards transit and existing urban infrastructure.

The Historical Idlewild

While OutKast’s new movie Idlewild (IMDB, official site) may be set in a fictional Georgia town in the 1930s, it shares a name with an actual Michigan place. Idlewild, Michigan was founded in 1912 by a group of four white businessmen as an African American resort community for the growing black middle class.

The creators sold property to a number of prominent African Americans and the community grew rapidly, developing a reputation as a “Black Eden” — an intellectual and cultural mecca. Although the resort declined in popularity after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a core of year-round residents remained. The Idlewild African American Chamber of Commerce website contains a variety of historical information, and Wikipedia provides a good historical overview of the community and many links to further reading. The graphic is the cover of this book on Idlewild history.

As for the movie, Rolling Stone didn’t seem to like it, but Salon did, and it’s polling just about even on Rotten Tomatoes.

Detroit’s ‘Dream Cruise’

Last Saturday’s Woodward Dream Cruise, billed by organizers as “the world’s largest one-day celebration of car culture,” is a car show featuring over 40,000 cars cruising along a 16-mile stretch of Woodward Avenue through nine different suburban cities. (I was able to catch a bit on Friday when I was in the Detroit area visiting Libby) Organizers estimate the crowds on a rainy Saturday near 1 million, but the event can draw as much as a half a million more with good weather. Interestingly, the cruise doesn’t actually start inside the limits of the Motor City but at 8 Mile, its northern bountary. The Detroit Free Press described this year’s efforts to extend the event to the heart of the city:

If the rain diminished the action north of 8 Mile, it devastated the first attempt to bring the cruise into Detroit. A small but enthusiastic group of volunteers huddled under a tent on Pontchartrain, waiting to pass out Cruise in Detroit maps. But by noon, just two cruisers had cruised all the way to Detroit and the T-Plex Museum on Piquette and Brush. When the driving tour ended late Saturday, 46 had taken part, said Chris Kempa, a project leader with Detroit Synergy, the volunteer group that sponsored the tour.”It would have been a lot better had it not been for the rain,” he said.

While Detroit residents enjoyed the event, news from the domestic auto industry continues to be dismal. Coverage of the Dream Cruise in Saturday’s Free Press shared space with a story reporting that Ford is cutting domestic production 21% for the last three months of 2006. Michigan’s unemployment rate is currently at 7%, making it the state with the second highest unemployment level in the country. The state’s economy is the top issue in the state’s gubernatorial race where Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm is facing former Amway executive Dick DeVos.

> Free Press Dream Cruise page
> Detroit News Dream Cruise page
> Dream Cruise official website

Photos taken by Flickr user MadisonAvenue

Is Michigan Amazing?

“Michigan has a million stories to tell,” gushes MichiganIsAmazing.com, a new blog launched by Ann Arbor public relations company Hass MS&L. The blog will feature text, images, and video submitted and voted on by users showcasing “all the great things about our state.” Everyone who submits a story idea will receive a “small gift,” and winning submissions earn the author a free t-shirt. Early posts, apparently written by the company, tend towards the tabloid with posts about exotic mushrooms and zany photos. Unclear, however, are the goals of the site: the only advertisement displayed is from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and there’s no “about” page.

> MichiganIsAmazing.com

Update: In response to this post, they’ve added an about us page.

My Vacation in Links

I just returned from visiting my girlfriend Libby in Michigan and parents in Maine. In Michigan Libby and I stayed at the Inn on Ferry Street, ate a Coney dog, saw a Tigers game, browsed the shelves in John King Books North, and spent time in Ferndale and Royal Oak. I noticed construction has begun on the long vacant Book-Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit, and there seems to be a lot of other development along the Woodward Corridor. In Maine, I went to the Yarmouth Clam Festival, had a lobster roll from Bayley’s, and biked on a Maine segment of the East Coast Greenway. I also saw Tom, who’s been doing lots of work on his house lately.

On the plane to Michigan I read Justice Thomas’s extremely interesting dissent in Kelo v. New London (the 2005 Supreme Court Case where the court held economic redevelopment qualified as a public use under eminent domain law), where after arguing for an originalist interpretation of “public use” he throws in a paragraph about how eminent domain has been used to displace poor and black communities, concluding that “Regrettably, the predictable consequence of the Court’s decision will be to exacerbate these effects.” I first read about the dissent on this blog post on blackprof.com which contains Emma Coleman Jordan’s analysis.

I also read an article published in the Journal of Urban History in January by Blake Gumprecht examining the geography of college towns by using Ithica, New York as a case study. I found the article quite interesting and I think there are many similarities between Ithaca and Ann Arbor. Gumprecht describes the various communities of the “highly segregated” college town including the status-seeking greeks, NIMBY faculty neighborhoods (“You don’t want to live next door to an undergraduate student house. One property, one bad apple, can cause a whole flight.”), and the familiar student ghetto with both modern and dilapidated rental housing. Describing the development of Ithaca’s Collegetown, Gumprecht throws in this tidbit: “The city encouraged development by temporarily suspending building – high limits and parking requirements. Over a ten-year period, more than a dozen apartment buildings, capable of housing 1,70 people, were built.” (p. 255) How’s that for pent-up demand? The article is available online here: “Fraternity Row, the Student Ghetto, and the Faculty Enclave.” (PDF)

On the topic of reading, I also finished a borrowed copy of “The First Days of School.” Although mostly relevant to K-12 teachers, it did contain some tips I’m sure will be useful for the class of 18-year-old freshman I’ll be TAing this fall. Ironically, it was in Maine where I discovered the book “Saving the Neighborhood: You Can Fight Developers and Win!” at a church book sale. The book is a NIMBY handbook written by a DC resident and published in 1990. The examples of citizen activism include a petition to stop the construction of an office building on Wisconsin Avenue in Northwest, and the entire book seems full of DC-area examples.

Student Housing in Ann Arbor

My friend Dale has just posted a rough introduction to his urban planning thesis to his blog. He is making an ambitious argument — perhaps too ambitious — but I’m interested to see what he uncovers in the process of investigating it.

In this thesis, I argue that students individually and collectively were agents of change in this period of major alterations in the educational project of the university, in local and university housing policy, and in federal housing policy, making significant contributions to urban development even while they worked within a structural framework of national economic depression and world war, changing federal housing policy, suburbanization, the emergence of the research university, and urban crisis and revitalization. This consideration of student housing, then, is an effective means of examining the changing relationship between the city and the university in twentieth century American urban history.

I’ll also be interested to see what comparisons could be made with College Park from his finished work, and what insights he uncovers on the topic of student voting rights. A year ago I blogged about an interesting group, the Student Voting Rights Campaign, but sadly just noticed their rich trove of articles collected in 2004 was lost to a server crash. Here’s to hoping it’s backed up somewhere.

> Urban Oasis: “Allow Me to Introduce Myself“

Luxury Boxes at the Big House?

My father pointed me to this article in the New York Times from a couple weeks back (I found a free copy on a blog here, but with editorializing) about a controversy over a proposal to add luxury boxes to Michigan Stadium. The idea has been floated as a means to produce additional revenue for the athletic department, but no concrete proposal has been made before the Regents yet. New York City resident John Pollack, who is the son of a U-M professor and season ticket holder, has organized opposition to the plan and launched a website savethebighouse.com. On the website he argues “The very idea of private luxury boxes in Michigan Stadium runs contrary to the egalitarian ideals to which the U-M is dedicated,” and likens the proposed boxes to the much-hated “halo” which was removed from the stadium shortly after it was added in the 1990s as a response to fan complaints.