tomo

Wolverine, welcome to Chicago.

The Detroit News, WWJ, and WXYZ are holding a Detroit photo competition. Since I know many of you take Great Detroit Photos, I thought I'd let you know and hopefully one of you wins! http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...=73247659911636 (from DetroitFunk.com)

On the topic of Detroit photography, some of you may be interested in joining this Flickr group and going to the opening on June 23. I know many of you take great pictures of the city or, like me, just like looking at them. http://www.flickr.com/groups/exposuredetroit/

The handover of Eastern Market couldn't happen soon enough, but it's great to hear it's a step closer! There's now a good chance that by this time next year Detroit'll have two highly bolstered tourist assets -- Mexicantown's welcome center and a week-long Eastern Market. resourcefulidiot, you are right about the metro area's great ethnic foods. It's what makes Detroit a big city. Thai restaurants everywhere, South Asian and Polish in Hamtramck, Vietnamese in Madison Heights (don't forget Windsor), even the occasional Filipino or Nepalese restaurant. ANY new restaurants in the Eastern Market district would help.

Come on now, J Dilla died in L.A. from a medical condition. Eight Mile and Gratiot may be a tame area (where two highways intersect you're probably more likely to get injured in an auto accident than anything!) but apparently it's not so tame inside (illegal) afterhours clubs where people aren't searched for guns which they bring in... no matter where the club is. Maybe this is another reason for allowing bars to legally operate and serve alcohol later if they're willing to buy licenses to do so.

The day after I move to Chicago. Dang.

There are far too many people in the region who think like your parents, Zachariah. And that is exactly why I think Detroit has so much hidden potential, there are all these dollars floating around the region and a change in perception is all it would take to flood downtown Detroit with them. The next generation of kids will be much more likely to visit Detroit regularly, of course, but there's still oppurtunity to bring back the older generation, the ones who haven't been downtown in 20 years. I'm sure no metro area has a higher portion of people like that and it's a huge untapped market.

Allan, can you expand on why it is a low-cost renovation? It there hope for renovating other unused buildings downtown, even the larger ones, in a low-cost way as well?

Wow, Zissou, what city is this? Thanks for the fresh angle.

A lot could happen in 30 years. Detroit could experience an economic and highrise boom like many newer large downtowns experienced in the latter part of the 20th century while they themselves stagnate. We could do what Toronto has done (much more highrises in Toronto than in Chicago). But first we need to catch up with those other cities, Boston and Philly, etc. Greater Downtown Detroit could be transformed easily just by moving around resources within the Metro Detroit region, but to go after Chicago or LA would require a new economy, like the one NextEnergy and TechTown are going after. Man, if all those people in the Corktown picture would MOVE there and start walking to those bars and restaurants and the stores (that would then be built for them) they'd lose at least a few percentages of that fat! I think what we need are more neighborhood dojos for kicking weight by kicking ass. Tapezord, is that the BCBS parking garage?

Downtown Detroit would be improved by a bunch more tall midrises than any single new record-breaking skyscraper (we don't need another RenCen to concentrate and kill the office market, yet, and functionally it's more important what's happening at street level than in the sky). Key Tower in Cleveland is indeed quite tall and it dwarfs the rest of its downtown. I think a better measure of a skyline's height is the distribution of its tall buildings, e.g. the number of buildings over 100 meters (twice as many in Detroit). While there's not much most of us can do to get any new skyscrapers built, I do hope that new large companies decide to locate downtown and that smaller ones eventually grow into big ones and decide to expand their headquarters in new highrise office buildings rather than suburban campuses.

Hamtramck and HP do have many differences today, besides the current rate of immigration. Race and poverty level are big ones. So is the retail makeup and suburbanite attractions. What are your ideas? Precedent for a city successfully building ethnic neighborhoods? The same tools could be used to preserve and strengthen the Hmong area in northwest Detroit and the small Vietnamese community in the southwest (somewhere).

The problem that I see is that Highland Park's shared border with Hamtramck is quite small and it's entirely industrial. So it's not like people will simply move into houses that are right across the border, which they can do into Detroit to the north and east of Hamtramck. Not to mention a highway is basically Hamtramck's border to the west as well, further constraining residential expansion. In contrast to Hamtramck, HP does have some cool taller buildings that could one day be reused, plus it's right on Woodward. HP could definitely use a wave of immigrants...