I don't understand Detroit

My main take away from 3 and a half years of going to Detroit almost every day is that I do not understand Detroit.

It is too huge of a city to be understood. Its 139 square miles defy easy explanation. Even this underestimates the full number of lots in the city, which far exceeds the same area in the suburbs. Beyond this the city has little aparments buildings dotted over much of the east side, and despite the 1980s bulldozing to make room for big automative factories in a hope to save the city from total suburban flight of all jobs, still probalby lost more homes, businesses and churches to the building of freeways than to the building of gargantuan factories like the Poletown Plant.

Detroit has iconic abandoned buildings, like the Packer Plant, that has sat empty since 1958. Yet it is the stores that have closed since I went in there that tell me more, like the meat market that used to sit on Lahser just south of 8 Mile, or the many Taco Bells that used to dot the east side.

On the other hand it is the removal of the old factory building that was adjacent to the double Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall complex on Outer Drive just west of Mound that is the best sign that Detroit is being realigned to a city that has parts that people with suburban sensabilities can live in.

However that was exactly what the neighborhood around, and especially just north of, Emerson Elemntary were built as in the 1940s and early 1950s. Yet today these neighborhoods see house after house leveled.

It means something that some people in Brightmoor take the burning of houses as a sign that crime is on the decline because the drug dealers are being driven out.

My one take away from Detroit is it is not understandable. At least not by mere mortals. Maybe if I was a better student of all the social sciences I would have a hope to write a historical assesment of Detroit with as penertrating an understanding as "The Mediteranean and the Mediteranean World in the Age of Philip II".

However at present I content myself with knowing that the preservationists are wrong. The hope for a new, vibrant Detroit is mostly found through destroying as many unused and useless buildings as possible. It does no one any good to have a stately 1920s tudor revivial style dwelling on their street when the place is an abandoned hive for the activities of vagrants.

Also the reality of a car culture needs to be better adapted to. This means that Churches should be given opetions to expand their properties so that their parking lots are not across a street. New businesses should be encoraged to have on site parking, especially outside the downtown core, and parking on major streets should be discoraged.

Lastly the city needs to remove the scores of abandoned commencial buildings, primarily on the east side, built on dinky lots in residential zones, often on 2 minor streets, that are not going to be used again any time soon.

What Detroit needs most of all is a more aggresive program of removing blighted buildings. As long as charred remains of houses greet people thinking of moving in the city will not be able to turn around on a significant basis.