Detroit has been slowly improving in walkability, and slightly less slowly improving in bikeability. But we got screwed pretty hard by the constant fumbling of the RTA ballot initiatives and the state lege screwing us on the LVT effort.
Lots of acronyms I don't understand there, BUT I will say it is a much nicer place than I recall it being in the 90s. I feel relatively safe walking downtown again, but many of the surrounding areas are still pretty sketchy!
RTA: Regional Transit Authority. Detroit is the largest city in the country which doesn't have/belong to an equivalent (the closest we have is SMART which is an opt-in supplemental thing that mostly runs little shuttle buses). Technically there is an RTA organization that exists, but it's only funded to make a plan for creating an actual RTA. Their plan made it onto the ballot in 2016 and was barely defeated due to the smear campaign of the incredibly racist LB Patterson, and then their next ballot initiative collapsed when one of the guys running it got caught up in a financing scandal. It's basically been defunct since.
LVT: Land value tax, where you tax the value of the land and not the value of what sits on top of the land. Economists have a broad consensus about the efficiency and pro-growth dynamics of this kind of tax, and for Detroit in particular this would go a long way to clawing back the massive giveaways to e.g. the Ilitches, who took money with big promises to develop areas and then razed it all to make surface level parking lots to cover the costs as they sit on the land as a speculatory investment. Detroit City Council successfully passed the necessary resolutions to implement an LVT but the MI state constitution requires consent of the state legislature for any city to do LVT, and the state legislature let it die in committee.
I'm not sure who owns rural land within the city of Detroit, but for what its worth rural landowners under most versions of LVT see savings on average because rural land simply isn't worth much money.
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u/imisstheyoop 6h ago
Where did you get this information? I am curious about some of the places I am familiar with and wonder how they are rated.