MODERN TIMES
Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 23 Dec 2006
Toronto
and Detroit
ThereÕs
lots to be learned from travel.
Marie and I recently spent two weeks in Toronto and Detroit, cities that
offer insights about America and Fayetteville.
The
cities lie near the Great Lakes, 200 miles apart. Five million live within each metropolitan area, but only
0.8 million live in Detroit itself while 2.5 million live in Toronto. Detroit is 82 percent black, while
Toronto is more diverse—45 percent Chinese, South Asian, black, Filipino,
and others, and 55 percent white.
Detroit has experienced extreme suburban flight--people, mostly white,
leaving the city for the suburbs.
Detroit is AmericaÕs poorest large city.
Detroit,
ŌMotown,Ķ is a classic sprawling, low-density, car-dominated city. Only 16 percent of the metropolitan
population live in the city itself!
Land is underused.
Abandoned buildings, ranging from beautiful old salvageable structures
to giant collapsing factories, stand alongside vacant fields and ground-level
parking lots, along with a few hotels and business establishments. You wouldnÕt want to walk most of these
streets after dark. Very few middle-class
or rich people live downtown; those who do live in two- and three-story
apartment buildings with no shops, parks, or other amenities within walking
distance. Most of the middle-class
places to live are at least 12 miles from downtown.
You
have to drive to get downtown.
Detroit has essentially no mass transit. There are no subways, no
surface rail, and I spotted only two buses during the entire week. ThereÕs an
excess of 5-lane and 7-lane highways with no median, demonstrating that city
traffic engineers are more concerned with traffic flow than with quality of
life.
DetroitÕs
problems stem from decades past.
During the 1920s, General Motors bought up and then destroyed the cityÕs
street car lines in order to replace them with their own buses and, eventually,
with cars--a phenomenon that was then repeated in most American cities. Vicious race riots in 1943 and 1967
stimulated suburban flight. In the
early 1970s, the Arab oil embargo made DetroitÕs gas-guzzling cars obsolete,
and U.S. management lacked the vision to re-tool for energy conservation. People were laid off as our automobile
industry began a death spiral that continues today.
Despite,
or maybe because of, its problems, I developed an affection for Detroit and its
people. ItÕs made valiant efforts
to rebuild. Downtown streets are
surprisingly clean for a big city. An enormous development, the ŌRenaissance Center,Ķ opened
downtown in 1977, but its outsized, imperial setting proved not to be the
ticket to reviving the depressed central city. Detroit built an elevated two-car
train that zips around a 3-mile downtown loop every 15 minutes, stopping at a
dozen stations, but hardly anybody rides it because itÕs faster to walk. Detroit has maintained a major league
baseball park and a professional football stadium downtown, and these bring in
large crowds--that return to the suburbs right after the game.
The
first thing you notice about Toronto is its vibrant density. Crowds of people, of all classes and
all races, walk these streets. The
contrast with the vacant sidewalks of downtown Detroit is striking. Downtown land is in big demand. You wonÕt find vacant fields,
boarded-up buildings, or flat parking lots here, and you wonÕt find scary
places. Although there are lots of
cars, there are also plenty of buses, trolleys, and subways. Although it was essential to rent a car
to get around in Detroit, we didnÕt need or want a car in Toronto because mass
transit is so much more convenient, inexpensive, fast, and fun.
We
stayed in a small central hotel—something that would have been impossible
in Detroit. Downtown Toronto
offers plenty of shopping, hotels, restaurants, bars, theaters, and parks. The key to its success is that lots of
middle-class people live there.
They live in apartments in renovated buildings, and in tall
apartment/condominium buildings all over downtown. My guess is that they live there because they feel safe,
they like the downtown excitement, they work downtown, and they have convenient
mass transit at $100 per month for a city-wide transit card—much cheaper
than owning a car. Toronto
streets are narrow by U.S. standards; most multi-lane streets have medians,
often with trolley lines.
The
striking differences between these cities hold many lessons for America. Much of the difference stems from
MotownÕs, and AmericaÕs, automobile culture. Some of the difference stems from segregation. Except for
its dense and thriving Chinatown, Toronto seems highly integrated racially,
while DetroitÕs downtown is mostly black and its outer suburbs are mostly
white. We found it significant
that you seldom see a Canadian flag in Canada, and those you do see are of
modest size, while here one sees many American flags, many of them grotesquely
outsized. The most telling
difference is that lots of people live downtown in Toronto, while DetroitÕs
population lives mostly in the suburbs.
Although Fayetteville isnÕt Toronto or Detroit by a long shot, these cities hold lessons for us. A healthy city needs safe streets, alternatives to the automobile, and high residential density in the middle. FayettevilleÕs beautiful but empty old post office building, the flat parking lots near the square, our sprawling suburbs, the rise of the mall area, and the departure of PennyÕs, Lewis BrothersÕ Hardware, and other shops from downtown, show parallels with the downfall of Detroit. FayettevilleÕs new Downtown Master Plan and City Plan 2025, and the possibility of commuter rail and a real bus system for Northwest Arkansas, show parallels with the success of Toronto. The choice is up to us.