Thanks for the Jane Jacobs reference, I will try to check in out in the next few weeks.

After reading your comments, I suspect that we may not be as far apart as your initial comments suggest. In fact, as I re-read your comments, I’m not sure we are far apart at all. I didn’t find much to disagree with in most of what you had to say. It may be that I have not fleshed out or articulated my vision sufficiently for others. It may also be that we have a philosophical difference over whether the bar scene is a great place to find a life partner, but I digress…

I love your idea a four story apartment building with retail on the 1st floor, that complements what is around it, on the 4th and William parking lot. Complementing ones surroundings can mean many things. It wouldn’t have to be in an historic style – I would enjoy a four-story structure on that site that artfully blended the old and the new. The Charm Zone is not supposed to be a museum.

As Julie and Mr. Lamb have implied, the devil is in the details. The present zoning plans are a long, long way away from the Calthorpe process, and I don’t see the views you and I espouse in anything going on at city hall. I myself WANT to live near downtown in an historic neighborhood in which life can be lived largely on foot. I suggest that a downtown/near downtown that is hospitable to people over 24 (yes, to people in the second half of their twenties) requires a more-deft sense of life-as-art, and what Ann Arbor’s true strengths are, than what is now going on in our planning and zoning processes.

My read of the tea leaves is that our present process is a cross between a noble but flawed vision that Ann Arbor can replace Detroit as the population and economic center of Michigan, with a population of over half a million, and a gold-fever mentality from elements who may see a once-in-a-lifetime chance to cash out big, the future be damned. Our present course of action will result in the cannibalization of the things that make the community attractive. Like you, I advocate that we build on our strengths, not destroy them.

Making it easier for people to live near all that charm and history is great – but if we tear all the charm and history down in the name of density, what do we have? We need a more-deft touch than the current city hall crowd can offer. A moratorium makes that possible.

I’m advocating density and diversity, not mass redevelopment. What’s the harm in making it easier for people to live closer to that charm and history?

Placing a moratorium on development (it doesn’t matter for how long, or in what zone) just makes it seem like the city advocates stagnation. And I have to admit, sometimes, it sure feels like it does.

here is a first thought,
-“To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”
–Winston Churchill

my thought,
-density development and destruction are not an answer
-district and neighborhood are not necessarily two different things

-cm Derezinski is wrong
a moratorium will not halt on going projects, and will give us all a chance to step back and consider what is being done…
and second,
i do not know exactly what year or what it was called then, in the late sixties and/or mid 70′s, but there was a moratorium put in place, so that the city could measure the impact of the prolific and out of control destruction of historic neighborhoods and architecture, by those lovely concrete block 4/6/8 plexes called apartments…
we have not come far as this continues to go on in Burns Park

if we had not done that , and done a few architectural surveys, there would be no “Old West Side, no “Old Fourth Ward”, hardly a Kerrytown…
y’all are better off now, whether you know it or not

third and for the moment,
there is no real master plan until areas of historic architectural resources, districts and neighborhoods has been completed and landmarks and neighborhoods of historic relevance and context, are identified, this cannot be done w/out real survey/s work…
to spend 800,000 dollars on whatever “art” is, by an outsider, again is an amount so much larger than anything that could be spent on surveys of neighborhoods
lets start w/ a study commision to look at Germantown
Preservation is an Art…

I disagree with your statement that Main Streets don’t need to exist anymore. Main Streets DO still have a reason to exist. They’re for living on. They’re for walking out your front door and walking to your job, your grocery store, your hardware store, your local pub, etc. Downtown should be a neighborhood – not a district.
This is what would attract young talent to Ann Arbor. Young talent doesn’t want the ‘sense of actually being someplace’, they want to actually live IN that someplace. Downtown is where they meet the partner of their dreams, get married, have a couple kids and a dog, and THEN move to a house in the Lakewood neighborhood.

We agree on several points.

First, the kernel of truth in your Main Street Theme Park comment is that downtowns have no need to exist any more, either as retail or employment centers (internet shopping, telecommuting, driving, mass transit). They serve as gathering places, as places to connect, as entertainment districts, as cultural districts, as places where you go to have a sense of actually being someplace. When our development destroys the sense of place, of specialness, of connection with people present and past, then downtown serves no function. You may as well, then, be in Downtown Disney – it has better public restrooms and no vagrants. We have the real thing here, don’t blow it.

Like condos in Yosemite Valley, over-building Ann Arbor will destroy the reason that the place is special, the reason they would WANT to live there. My point is NOT that development should not happen in central Ann Arbor, or that it should be a museum. My point is that present zoning plans will through the baby out with the bath water by cannibalizing that which makes us attractive in the first place. Development should play to and enhance our strengths, not cannibalize them. Central Ann Arbor’s strength is the Charm Zone: build on it.

Second, I agree with you that the mall areas have been allowed to become ugly. This can be fixed. In Europe, placing high rises outside the Charm Zone is exactly what is done. There is no reason this cannot work here. Stadium Blvd. should be a desirable address, not a poster child for unattractive urban life.

Lastly, we agree that high rises are “human warehouses”, where ever they may be located. However, I recognize that some people actually like them, so I advocate locating them where they can form the nucleus of Ann Arbor’s new Modern Quarter. In the Modern Quarter, people who like the shiny-glass-and-steel-tower aesthetic can experience the sort of community center they want, and that you and I could visit as the mode struck us. This would add immensely to the diversity of environments in our city, and make it attractive to an even broader range of people. People might migrate between the Modern Quarter and the Charm Zone – we could have the best of both worlds.

Sadly, we must agree to disagree on what an Exurb is. The freeway nodes/mall areas of Ann Arbor are Arborland, Briarwood, and Westgate. I’m not sure these qualify as Exurbs, or even suburbs, since they are inside the city and no more than 2-3 miles from its center. In particular, the Lakewood neighborhood (home to the Pretender to the 5th Ward Council Seat) lies beyond Westgate Mall. Is Mr. Rosencranz an exurbanite?

I respect that you use your own name, not a pseudonym.

Anyone who says there is already affordable rentals in Ann Arbor should actually look for some sometime. If you work here and make under 50K, you pretty much can’t afford to live here (unless you’re subsidized by your parents or student loans), or living with strangers in what would be student housing.

I wish developers would build 10, 20, or even 30 story buildings, because thats the point it gets cost effective to really make it affordable for mere mortals, not students who have subsidized lives.

I read [20] as an acknowledgment of the inclusion in the meeting report of the remarks by a speaker during public commentary, who drew a parallel between demolition here and in the Middle East.