Detroit’s Urban Prosperity—A Dawn of a New Era

Detroit’s Urban Prosperity—A Dawn of a New Era

Detroit’s social infrastructure has been damaged for years and it has plagued the city’s overall infrastructure in terms of real development and economic progress. Therefore with the New Year coming upon us and a new President in the White House come January, Detroit has the opportunity to be a part of the dawn of urban prosperity and literally we can launch new era of urban development and economic progress. However it takes a real visionary to want to do the things that I am proposing that is needed for the city of Detroit to fully develop and maximize its potential like it could. With a visionary, Detroit can fully become perhaps the greatest urban prosperity venture in America’s history.

It all starts with a plan for our youth and safety. Detroit needs to launch the biggest teardown of abandoned houses initiative in the city’s history and perhaps in America’s history. Then with that initiative it needs to re-establish a fund for community groups and churches to buy houses and buildings that the city wants to take off its books for a $100 or less depending on the structural make up of the building. This fund that community groups and churches as well as other 501(c)3 programs could pay into, would go toward maintaining some of the historical properties that the city currently owns and tries to maintain.

With those two plans, Detroit needs a housing and building development commission established that attracts housing developers and investors to the city that want to establish various businesses or affordable and suitable housing on the lands where the abandoned houses and building will be torn down. Detroit will need to create more houses because we are expecting a population increase due to the fact we will launch the biggest recruitment of businesses and companies to the city that are interested in bringing “Green” jobs to the Motor City as well as technological and healthcare jobs. With those there industries being heavily pursued, we can than launch a job redevelopment and retraining program where we retrain many workers who will be laid off from the Big 3 auto industry to work other jobs and we can also train other people to get the type of jobs we are attracting.

Detroit’s urban prosperity initiative needs to also look at investigating in re-paving roads and streets with no asphalt but with cement because it lasts much longer. We can’t keep repaving the same streets in the city year after year so we need to launch a capital plan for the city so that we can pay for a lot of these initiatives. The pay to play game at city hall needs to end and those who want to pay to play should give that money to the city’s capital fund but that doesn’t mean your name or company’s name will be moved to the top of any list to get bids for jobs because everything will be based offer merit and productive. However by our cities politicians encouraging the city’s citizens, businesses and churches to fund the city’s first capital fund than it could really help in progressing the city’s urban agenda of tearing down abandoned structures, job employment & development, paving of streets, and neighborhood development.

However all of this would be for not if we don’t have enough police and firefighter on the streets to protect our citizens and to serve the needs of the people. Therefore we need to begin a massive training and recruitment undertaking that starts with the police officer and firefighter unions in the city having a better marketing campaign to recruit many of our young students from out of high school and college to join the ranks. We need to look at getting our brightest and young who probably can’t afford to go to college to join the ranks and perhaps work on their degree during the day or at night while be a police officer or firefighter. We could perhaps put quality and quantity on the city streets while at the same time, re-energizing the citizens’ faith in the city if we cut down response times by our emergency units (police, fire, and ambulance).

Until we get our man power up that doesn’t mean we ignore the job at hand which is to serve the citizens so with that in mind, our police officers need to become more neighborhood and community friendly because they will be walking the beat and getting to know the neighborhood, its residents and its business owners. They will frequently walk down streets and walk into businesses in a day to day business in order to bring some familiarity and personal style of policing the neighborhood back to our police force. The city of Detroit’s police force needs to be set up in a way that is similar to the NYPD police force that stays out and about in the Time Square area of New York. Our police force needs to be doing that not just in our downtown area but in our neighborhoods so a neighborhood community relations of at least 10 officers meaning 5 units will be assigned to walk and canvass the beat during the day light hours so that people are getting familiar with officers and vice-versa.

This is needed in order for the citizens of Detroit to want to open up to the police more in terms of reporting crime in the city. Another huge step to urban prosperity for the city of Detroit begins with the development and rebuilding of the city’s youth and recreational department. We need to launch perhaps the most expensive and massive project into youth and recreational facilities and parks that has ever been launched in any city. Our city needs to fix all our parks and bring them up to stature so that the parks in our neighborhoods are neighborhood and family friendly again. This needs to be a joint effort with community groups and churches within the city as many of them take adoption of the parks and help in the upkeep of many of these parks so that the city is not the only one responsible for the upkeep.

More recreational facilities for youth and senior citizens as well as adults need to be established in the city with the latest and most up to date equipment possible that will stimulate families to want to attend them, participate in them and volunteer in them. Our city needs to have at least 12-20 recreational facilities in the city so that ever city should be within driving range, walking range, or bus range to get to one. The upkeep of these facilities should be paid for by various fund raisers that the city’s youth and recreational department spearheads as well as perhaps a copy of dollars from the city’s capital fund. Another key component to the youth and recreational department is for the city to establish more baseball diamonds and soccer fields in parks in order to create more little leagues and soccer teams throughout the city.

The development of these structures or reestablishment of many of the baseball diamonds and soccer fields will give the city more of an advantage to attracting families within the city as well as people from across 8 mile and the city’s surrounding areas. If we build it, they will come. That’s the image and attitude that is needed when trying to create Detroit’s urban prosperity. Detroit needs to of course rebuild and work on many of its outdoor basketball facilities but at the same time, it needs to make sure our youth have in door basketball facilities to play in during the winter months as well. The fact of the matter is that Detroit’s urban prosperity initiative is one that should be centered on the youth and the word family. Everything that the city does to create urban prosperity should answer the question will families come and does this help the city’s youth.

Therefore, the city’s next step in urban prosperity has to be in creating places to shop at within the city. For the city of Detroit to be the largest city in the state of Michigan, we need to re-establish the city’s shopping facilities so that so many of the city’s dollars are not spent in other cities. The city of Detroit needs to think about building a shopping mall in perhaps the nearby Downtown area or on the Eastside of Detroit because so much land over in that area can be used to build such a structure. Secondly the shops that are placed in that mall should be shops that the surrounding malls around Detroit such as Oakland, Eastland, and Northland as well as Fairland don’t have. We need to get a Wal-Mart within that mall as well as one on the Westside of Detroit. We need to attract a movie theater perhaps one of Magic Johnson’s movie facilities to the city to be at that mall. We need to look at brining shops that are affordable to our tax base but also some upscale shops too.

If we build it, they will come because but we first have to improve the city’s public safety image. That’s where a marketing campaign to go right alone with the city’s capital fund plan goes hand and hand. We need to start showcasing the best of the city such as the waterway, our downtown area and some of our historic districts well as the city’s theater and play district which is second to New York. The city’s urban prosperity initiative needs to be one that is bold and a new undertaking that many cities in America will not be willing to undergo. The reason why Atlanta and Chicago have developed so much in the last two centuries is because they went under similar initiatives and their growth is continuing to grow. That’s why Detroit needs a visionary who is willing to spearhead these initiatives as well as well create an image of Detroit that is more like a vacation paradise.

Detroit’s urban prosperity initiative needs to involve attracting major conferences as well major events to the city as well as spearheading major events similar to those that the Chicago and Atlanta do. We need to think about establishing the city’s very own significant and signature events like Chicago has the “Taste of Chicago” and Atlanta has the “Greek Picnic”. We need our own signature events and that can only start of a brilliant marketing and strategy team who is willing to take Detroit into a new era of thinking and a new era of image makeover. Detroit’s image needs a huge makeover and its urban prosperity initiative can be the makeover that our city needs if all of these components are implemented just right.

These are just the general ideas to Detroit’s urban prosperity initiative but this could be built on and developed into Detroit’s very own strategic plan for urban prosperity. Detroit can start to see a dawn of a new era when it comes to urban prosperity and this could be that time to make Detroit strong again both economically, structurally and socially.