Dear Mayor Bing:

First of all, I would like to say that you have been a most welcome change for the City of Detroit and southeastern Michigan.  Your election to the position of mayor reflects a clean break with the politics of corruption and destruction that has plagued Detroit for the nearly 40 years that I have lived in this area.  I worked for quite a few years at Ford Motor Company's offices in the Renaissance Center and personally witnessed the physical and political decline of the city.  You have shown yourself to be in the mold of Dennis Archer, an ethical and honest leader, but hopefully will be far more successful than he was in turning Detroit around.

To say that Detroit faces enormous problems is a gross understatement.  Detroit is, essentially, an anachronism of the first half of the 20th century.  The rapid expansion of the automotive and supporting industries created an influx of population and wealth and led Detroit to annex adjacent areas.  By the 1960s, the city was showing signs of fracturing, but the politics and processes of the city did not adapt to the changes it faced.  The riots of 1967 became the public acknowledgement that the city was desperately ill.  The so-called "white flight" that followed... really an abandonment by all ethnic groups with the means to relocate... created a vacuum in Detroit's tax base and intellectual and skills foundation, and began the rapid descent of the city into a "dependency ghetto."

To put it bluntly, Detroit does not have the mix of residents capable of supporting the city.  Without a decently educated and substantial numbers of professional and skilled residents the city must constantly address the needs of those who are unable or unwilling to contribute to the renovation and recovery of Detroit.  The old model must be broken and discarded.

You have stated that physical downsizing is not an option.  Actually, it is the one reasonable and logical step for a city that has lost over one-half of its population.  While Detroit does have pockets of relative prosperity on its western and northern periphery, they large areas of relative desolation between those areas and the central city make them more likely candidates for new townships or annexation by other existing cities.  Realistically, Detroit cannot maintain a geography of 138 square miles with less than a million residents.  Ideally, Detroit should cover no more than 60-70 square miles from its focus at Woodward and Jefferson.

You have floated the concept of "urban farming" as a potential way to reclaim Detroit's wastelands.  It does not solve the geographic problem, nor does it provide significant tax or employment opportunities.  It simply exchanges one geographic barrier with another.  Additionally, once the land has been rezoned agricultural, the future land use and tax structure would have to be substantially different from the rest of the city.  How would city services work in a rural setting?  It would be more efficient and effective to unincorporate these areas and turn them over to the state for temporary administration.  This could include a process whereby viable areas "spin off" into new legal entities and the rest reverts to state or county land.  

The City of Detroit would then be free to focus on a true regeneration having maintained the business, entertainment, arts, and educational districts at its core... downtown, the stadiums and theaters, the museums, and Wayne State University... which are the truly viable portions of the central city.  The outlying areas would include many square miles of essentially uninhabitable desolation, but far less than the extant city.  The city would be able to focus on removing the blight, creating new enterprise zones with cooperation from the state, and concentrating its police, fire, and educational resources toward the reclamation of its past glory days.

You might argue that such a course is too dramatic.  What city could abdicate its governance of more than half of its area and survive?  I suggest that the concept of a political entity such as Detroit is in no way written in stone.  For Detroit to survive, it must recognize that a changing reality requires a changed model for survival.  Perhaps Detroit could look to one of its neighbors for inspiration.  No, not Dearborn or Grosse Pointe.  How about Ford Motor Company?  Alan Mulally and the Ford family recognized that the old, large, cumbersome way was not a formula for survival.  Ford Motor Company has done what I suggest the City of Detroit must do for survival: downsize and reinvent itself.

It is tempting to grasp at whimsical notions of becoming the Urban Farmer City or some such.  But the reality is that it has taken half a century to destroy the city and the old structure upon which it was built has long since disappeared.  It is time for a fresh start and a clean break with the past, including its geography.

Mayor Bing, I have written about Detroit... among a number of subjects... for the past five years since retiring from Ford Motor Company.  Most of what I have written has been critical with good reason.  I see you as perhaps the last, best chance for the city to turn itself toward a new direction.  But the time is limited.  A population of 750,000 residents is not that far in the offing.  At that point, the city is dead in its present configuration.  If you are interested in my commentary, you can access it at: http://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/search/label/Detroit

I will admit to being a curmudgeon, but not an unreasonable one.  Therefore, I wish you the best in this very large and unforgiving task you have before you.

Sincerely,