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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>Detroit Future City</title>
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<h1><a href="index.html">Detroit Future City</a></h1>
<ul class="breadcrumb">
<li><a href="index.html">Home</a> <span class="divider">»</span></li>
<li>Planning Elements <span class="divider">»</span></li>
<li class="active">City systems element</li>
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<h3>The city systems element</h3>
<h4>Three transformative ideas</h4>
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<a href="#1">1. Strategic infrastructure renewal</a>
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<a href="#2">2. Landscape as 21st Century infrastructure</a>
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<a href="#3">3. Diversified transportation for Detroit and the region</a>
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<h4>Seven strategies and actions</h4>
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<a href="#a">A. Reform delivery system</a>
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<a href="#b">B. Create landscapes that work</a>
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<a href="#c">C. Reconfigure transportation</a>
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<a href="#d">D. Enhance communication access</a>
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<a href="#e">E. Improve lighting efficiency</a>
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<a href="#f">F. Reduce waste and increase recycling</a>
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<a href="#g">G. Actively manage change</a>
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<h4>Transformative ideas: city systems and the environment</h4>
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<p><strong>Renewing and realigning for the new Detroit.</strong> From streetlights and utility networks to waste management and transportation, Detroit's city systems sustain its residents and businesses—but in turn must be sustained by revenues from these users. Yet population and employment loss, and the resulting loss of revenue and disinvestment, have left Detroiters paying more for less.</p>
<p>Even though Detroit's economy is growing in new sectors—such as information technology, finance, communications, and design—the city will likely continue to lose some population over the next 20 years. Reorganizing the city's systems now is critical to meeting the needs of Detroiters who have been paying and waiting for a better day, as well to match and support the future Detroit of connected, diverse neighborhoods and employment centers that encourage new jobs and new neighbors. The city's government, private utility operators, civic and business leaders, and residents face big decisions about improving services while reducing costs, closing an overwhelming budget gap that has burdened the city for decades, and reshaping an over-scaled, underinvested infrastructure into an efficient, environmentally sustainable set of 21st century systems. If we confront these tough decisions now, we can improve the quality of life for Detroiters and put the city back on the path to financial security within 10 years.</p>
<p><strong>Reconciling and replenishing.</strong> Realigning Detroit's city systems is not just important for the sake of efficiency: It is a matter of justice for all. The most economically vulnerable households in Detroit are also the hardest hit by system inefficiencies that harm their health as well as their pocketbooks. In particular, air pollution from industry and car exhaust have contributed to high rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases, especially among children.</p>
<p>Transportation holds an important key to creating a socially and economically just Detroit. The Detroit of today is a driver's city, without enough transit or other transportation choices, and with many jobs well beyond the city limits. The very people who need jobs most are left behind, struggling with transit routes that don't connect them to work, or sharing an old car along with all the upkeep. Detroiters who can't afford a car are also cut off from fair access to healthy food, recreation, health care, and a whole range of necessities for a healthy, balanced life.</p>
<p>The urgency of addressing environmental degradation and residents' quality of life reaches far beyond city limits. Regional economies, transportation, and water and air quality issues connect Detroit to the entire Great Lakes ecosystem. Traditional infrastructures and industry tend to degrade resources, with regional consequences. New alternative forms of infrastructure, using landscape to clean air and water, can restore environmental balance and improve quality of life and the environment in Detroit and in the entire Great Lakes basin.</p>
<p><strong>Shaping the city to suit real needs.</strong> The Detroit we now live in was designed for nearly 2 million people, and the extra capacity in city systems is not only going to waste, it actually creates a drag on services for the current residents. Just as we can find new ways to manage the abundance of land in the city, we can unlock innovations to manage surplus system capacity and reallocate resources to upgrade and maintain core systems, improve service, and heal the environment. Systems renewal will be coordinated with land use change to better relate neighborhoods and employment districts, as well as the systems that serve them.</p>
<p>The key is to be smart about how and where we locate and reinforce residential areas, employment, and other activities. These decisions must be balanced with the development Detroit has now, and especially with the knowledge that some residents will continue to live in areas that have high-vacancy. The Strategic Framework foresees how the city can evolve from its present pattern— which is spread out and hard to serve—toward a city of connected neighborhoods where employment, residences, and activities are all close by, or are connected in an efficient system of high-speed transit routes and green, landscaped boulevards. Some areas of the city that have already moved away from residential land use will be suited for new land uses and development types, including new green infrastructure that works to clean the air and water and support the health of the whole city and region. Services will be scaled to the number of people and uses in each area of the city.</p>
<p><strong>System transformation.</strong> Three major transformations underpin the change in Detroit's systems—strategic renewal of infrastructure to suit demand, deploying surplus land as a form of infrastructure (radically changing the image of the city in the process), and changing the culture of transportation (to enhance connections and minimize environmental impact).</p>
<p>The goal of reconfiguring services is to continue to providing core services— including water, sewerage, gas, electricity, and communications services—to all Detroiters wherever they work and live, while also serving all the needs for existing and growing businesses. Delivering the change that has escaped the city in the past will require coordinated effort among all system providers, public and private. This coordination will need to be planned and carried out from a central point of accountability, in order to transform the city's infrastructure and service quality.</p>
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<h4>Ideas</h4>
<h5><a name="1"></a>1. Strategic infrastructure renewal</h5>
<p><strong>Differentiated and reliable investment.</strong> The Strategic Framework proposes a differentiated level of investment across the city, aligning infrastructure capacity to Detroit's future form and continuing to serve people where they live and work now. The potential benefits for economic development and cost reduction are significant, but cannot be achieved instantly. Instead, each area of the city will need an approach to investment that provides certainty and predictability so that systems agencies, businesses, civic groups, and residents can make long-term plans. Moving to a situation where more people live in higher-density areas and fewer people live in lower-density areas (a more efficient distribution) is a critical step in reducing the financial problems faced by service providers and end users.</p>
<p><strong>System differences and integration.</strong> The five key systems of water, waste, energy, transportation, and communications each have specific issues arising from their installation and ownership history, as well as their unique technical aspects. A proposed investment approach for each area of the city should be coordinated with land use and should prioritize how systems are upgraded or replaced over time. Although each system has its own peculiarities, coordinating the investments in related systems can provide significant efficiencies across all the systems.</p>
<h5><a name="2"></a>2. Landscape as 21st Century Infrastructure</h5>
<p>Landscape is an opportunity to address Detroit's critical environmental issues and public health hazards. In particular, blue and green infrastructures are landscapes that cleanse stormwater and improve air quality, respectively. Traditional infrastructural systems are typically focused on delivering only one service at a time, often at the expense of the environment and public health. By contrast, landscape infrastructures serve many functions by providing habitat, offering recreation opportunities, enhancing transportation options through bicycling and walking, and improving neighborhoods by providing beauty and increasing property values—all while serving a practical, environmental function such as retaining or cleansing stormwater.</p>
<p>Landscape systems typically cost less to build and maintain than conventional infrastructure, creating an economic benefit. Landscape infrastructures offer opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration across agencies, permitting them share or coordinate personnel and budgets in ways that are not possible for conventional infrastructure projects. These systems will have regional ecological benefits, including improved water quality in the Rouge and Detroit Rivers and Lake Erie, as well as increased and improved habitat for local wildlife and migrating birds.</p>
<h5><a name="3"></a>3. Diversified transportation for Detroit and the region</h5>
<p><strong>Applying new technology to existing roads.</strong> The transportation system—especially Detroit's fixed road network—must be substantially reconfigured to suit the currently smaller population within the city, and will also have to adapt to suit emerging needs within the city and region. Because Detroit is also central to the support system for a freight hub of national and global significance—the busiest North American commercial border crossing, and a significant freight employer in its own right—the creation and upgrading of freight routes into and through Detroit need consistent, long-term support. At the same time, residents urgently need more transportation choices beyond driving.</p>
<p>New technologies can be integrated into Detroit's transportation network to serve both commercial and personal transportation. Mobile devices (including cell phones) can be used by users and operators to manage on-demand services that match capacity to demand, improving efficiency and allowing smaller fleets to serve the same number of people. Modest adjustments to the existing road network will greatly facilitate the integration of new technology. The very size of Detroit's existing roads also offers an opportunity to make change with significantly less disruption than in a fast-growing city.</p>
<p><strong>Addressing the distance and density challenges.</strong> A key challenge in Detroit is how spread out the city is, compared with cities of similar population. The relatively low density and long distances between employment and neighborhoods, coupled with how many commute out from the city every day, will challenge the city and region to devise strategies to increase transit access and use. Bringing more jobs within reach of public transit is only part of the answer. Overhauling the operational practices of the region's transit providers is the other part. Encouraging and supporting greater use of cycling and walking represents a low-cost way to support system-wide change in transportation with a relatively small investment. Key changes will be the development of a ‘greenway' network to promote cycling and walking, introduction of bus rapid transit (BRT) operations on main travel routes (within and beyond the city limits), and improved intermodal transfer for passengers and freight.</p>
<h4>Strategies and Actions</h4>
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<h5><a name="a"></a>A. Reform delivery system</h5>
<p>Detroit's infrastructure renewal strategy addresses the need to allocate limited funds both spatially in the city—where people work and live right now—and temporally over the next twenty years, to encourage new residents and new business. This will mean upgrading network capacity in priority employment centers and neighborhoods, while reducing capacity where there is little or no demand. All investments must be guided by a clear plan that removes uncertainty around future city development and demonstrates the maximum possible cost savings for each dollar spent up front.</p>
<p>Reforming system delivery also means coordinating investment among all of the private and public partners involved, to prevent them from acting without reference to one another, which in turn could prevent them from duplicating efforts or making unnecessary expenditures. It also means being aware of the technical or social constraints and special needs of each particular area, so that restructuring the city is not only cost-effective but also still serves residents' needs.</p>
<h6>Implementation actions</h6>
<ol>
<li>Use the framework plan to create certainty around residential and employment density in each area of the city.</li>
<li>Right-size systems so that network capacity matches residential and employment demand for each area in the medium term.</li>
<li>Balance investment in areas of greatest need with investment in areas of greatest potential.</li>
<li>Address equity: ensure that a good standard of core services are provided to all groups in all areas including high-vacancy areas.</li>
</ol>
<h5><a name="b"></a>B. Create landscapes that work</h5>
<p>Although the City of Detroit only accounts for 12.9% of the total Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) service area, investing in blue infrastructure within Detroit (rather than elsewhere in the region) is a valuable opportunity for the city</p>
<ul>
<li>to emerge as a leader in sustainable water management strategies and technologies;
<li>to enjoy the multiple benefits blue infrastructure offers to a city (visual amenities, increased property values, and neighborhood stabilization);
<li>to capture funding opportunities that exist regionally (Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funds, and other grants).
</ul>
<p>Additional benefits of blue infrastructure include flood mitigation, improved water quality and stream channel health (better for fish and other aquatic life), and recreational opportunities.
</p>
<p>Green corridors are proposed as forest buffers that absorb carbon dioxide, particulate matter, and pollutants emitted into the air from vehicular exhaust, industrial uses, or infrastructure facilities. Improved air quality has health benefits for residents who live nearby and can provide a unique setting to attract new businesses.</p>
<h6>Implementation actions</h6>
<ol>
<li>Deploy surplus land as multifunctional infrastructure landscapes, primarily addressing flood water mitigation and air quality.</li>
<li>Bring health and social benefits associated with landscapes and green facilities to lower income groups with poor access to transportation.</li>
</ol>
<h5><a name="c"></a>C. Reconfigure transportation</h5>
<p>Detroit's transportation systems must be realigned to better serve the emerging needs of the future city. For example, the existing road network has significantly more space than it requires to meet current and projected traffic demand. At the same time, there is a shortage of non-motorized transportation networks for people to walk and cycle on. Paths that do exist are disjointed and less valuable than if they were connected in a single network, particularly for freight efficiency.</p>
<p>Detroit's transit system is in need of major reform to establish bus rapid transit (BRT) links between the main employment centers in the metropolitan area and to orient other transit types as feeders. These faster routes will offer access to a wider range of employment opportunities for Detroiters than at present, and will improve cross-town connections. During initial stages, the proposed adjustments to the network can be made at little or no additional cost. Some changes simply require a different mode of operation using the same fleets and roads—such as designating new express bus routes as a precursor to BRT or light rail. Others can be implemented on a rolling basis so that large up-front costs are avoided. The transportation network (roads and railways, as well as the vehicles that circulate on them) is as important to quality of life as it is to accessing work, services, education, and business opportunities. In addition, Detroit's strategic location on national and international networks makes transportation improvement a potentially important industry in its own right.</p>
<h6>Implementation actions</h6>
<ol>
<li>Realign city road hierarchy to provide faster connections between employment, district, and neighborhood centers.</li>
<li>Enhance transit service and increased ridership by realigning transit system to provide integrated network based on fast connections between regional employment centers, supported by feeder services from residential areas.</li>
<li>For higher-vacancy areas, provide smaller-scale, flexible on-demand services.</li>
<li>Align pattern of development in centers and neighborhoods to support greater number of walking and cycle trips, including promotion of greenways.
<li>Support freight and logistics industries through upgrade of key routes and provision of enhanced connections across the border to Canada.</li>
<li>Provide large-scale multimodal freight interchange facilities to support local industry and overall city logistics role.</li>
</ol>
<h5><a name="d"></a>D. Enhance communication access</h5>
<p>The information and communication technology industry (in its wireless incarnation)is sufficiently young that it has not suffered from the decline in Detroit's population in the same way as the other city systems. Telecoms and data companies are, in fact, still expanding their coverage of the city. In this context, Detroit has an opportunity to harness the latest technology for monitoring and real-time balancing or optimizing of city systems. On top of the management of the hard systems there are real benefits available to the delivery of public services through e-governance programs. This is quite apart from the critical support that super-fast data systems provide to some of Detroit's fastest growing industries.</p>
<h6>Implementation actions</h6>
<ol>
<li>Ensure high-speed data networks are in place to serve existing and new economic sectors and wider community.</li>
<li>Develop e-government platform to maximize efficiency of social service delivery.</li>
<li>Utilize improved data network to develop smart infrastructure systems which deliver improved service with smaller capacity infrastructure.</li>
</ol>
<h5><a name="e"></a>E. Improve lighting efficency</h5>
<p>Of all the public services at stake in Detroit's changing population and land use patterns, public lighting is one of the most potent symbols of the scale of decline in city infrastructures. This being the case, the Public Lighting department has embarked on an ambitious plan to both rationalize the number of active lamps in the city and to upgrade them to low-energy fittings. This has the potential to be developed further to align to the land use changes set out in the Strategic Development Framework plan. Significant organizational and financial changes— including the establishment of a separate Public Lighting Authority (PLA) to contract out maintenance and operation to a third party—are also being considered to improve service delivery and unlock funding for investment.</p>
<h6>Implementation actions</h6>
<ol>
<li>Reduce number of lights and upgrade all remaining lights to low-energy LED type.</li>
<li>In high-vacancy areas, take some parts of the network off-grid, using solar power for generation.</li>
<li>Transfer ownership of the network to a new Public Lighting Authority which can procure services from the private sector competitively.</li>
</ol>
<h5><a name="f"></a>F. Reduce waste and increase recycling</h5>
<p>Detroit's waste collection and management system is linked to the era of centralized production and distribution. New technologies for collecting and processing, along with restructured form of the city, offer opportunities to decentralize and optimize the city's waste management system. By linking waste management with transportation adjustments and land use changes, Detroit can become cleaner and more efficient. In particular, Detroit could recycle much more of its waste and develop more rigorous recycling programs.</p>
<h6>Implementation actions</h6>
<ol>
<li>Reduce total levels of waste through citizen education and work with packaging industry.</li>
<li>Develop targeted and citywide curbside recycling program.</li>
<li>Ensure that incinerator emissions remain at or below US EPA standards and international best practice.</li>
</ol>
<h5><a name="g"></a>G. Actively manage change</h5>
<p>Each of the city system providers has been challenged by the restructuring of the city. Developing a successful response to the challenges will greatly depend on effective coordination among system operators. Such an approach to system consolidation will open up opportunities for a wider number of stakeholders to achieve efficiency and integration of services and systems. These opportunities can be understood as interdependencies (where streamlining one system facilitates operational efficiencies for another), indirect benefits (improving quality of life and environmental justice through more efficient use of space and resources), and interagency agreements (by-products of one system can be used by another).</p>
<p>The regulatory issues that impede effective interagency operation should be tackled, and an interagency platform established to facilitate the kind of coordinated planning that the city will need if it is to move forward from its current predicament. Although distinct, these proposals are linked because one of the best ways to structure change is via the requirements of each agency to file an annual capital investment budget for state approval. Thus, mandated levels and forms of service could be varied to align each system with the others.</p>
<p>Several regulatory changes to support interagency cooperation have been proposed in the past, yet have not been adopted by the city. These changes deserve renewed emphasis. Examples of this are the creation of a Regional Transportation Authority to allow for integrated public transportation policy and funding, adjustment of the current road funding mechanism (Act 51) to meet the future needs of the city, and the creation of a new Public Lighting Authority able to buy its energy from multiple suppliers and outsource maintenance contracts if necessary.</p>
<h6>Implementation actions</h6>
<ol>
<li>Adopt Strategic Framework Plan as basis for systems transformation and put in place rolling review program.</li>
<li>Create an interagency platform to coordinate change across public and private sector bodies.</li>
<li>Communicate with affected communities and monitor processes for emerging success and unforeseen adverse impacts.</li>
</ol>
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