HOLONOMY: the science of interacting parts within wholes.
Holos = Whole.
On = Part.
Nomy = Systematized Knowledge.
The Study or Science of Wholeness.
The balance between Self-Assertion and Integration.
Matthew Dolan, Susan Tompor and John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press
8:23 a.m. EST November 8, 2015
One
year after a federal judge approves Detroit's bankruptcy exit plan,
progress has been made while looming challenges remain, especially city
pensions
The
City of Detroit has more than enough cash to pay its daily bills.
Thousands of busted streetlights have been replaced. City retirees still
receive pension checks, and valuable paintings remain ensconced in the
gilded halls of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
That's the good
news. But a year after a federal judge approved a cost-cutting and
reinvestment plan in the nation's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy
case, Detroit's financial future still hangs in the balance.
Among the greatest concerns: a multibillion-dollar pension bill that starts coming due in less than a decade.
The
city is on the hook to make a balloon pension payment estimated at more
than $100 million in 2024 alone. But if the pension investments do not
perform as anticipated, the bill could be significantly higher.
So
far, the early returns for the investments since the bankruptcy are
falling short. City officials and their watchdogs are already
considering paying more into funds much sooner than prescribed by the
city's bankruptcy exit plan confirmed only a year ago. It's unclear how
Detroit would foot the bill.
Brian Harding of Ex Cops performs during the Mo Pop Festival at the West Riverfront Park in Detroit on Saturday July 25, 2015.
The re-tooled two-day summer fest has a new home at West Riverfront Park, where concertgoers will jam to headliners Modest Mouse and Chromeo, plus 21 other acts.
Experience every second of Mo Pop live with the Free Press. We'll be livestreaming sets, talking to bands, posting a ton of pictures to Instagram, and in general having an excellent time. Whether or not you've got your tickets to Mo Pop, we hope you'll hang with us Saturday and Sunday at Freep.com.
Ryan Garza Detroit Free Press
Crews work to ready the area at the West Riverfront Park in Detroit on Friday July 24, 2015, for this weekends Mo Pop Festival.
You can also keep up with Mo Pop action through our social media channels:
Brooks Patterson to Dan Gilbert: Hands off our jobs
Bill Laitner, Detroit Free Press 12:28 p.m. EST November 6, 2014
Downtown Detroit's premier jobs booster and real-estate investor should keep his hands off Oakland County's employers, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson warned Wednesday.
Patterson's saber-rattling talk came in a speech in Southfield, where the outspoken county boss cheered the introduction of the county's new tech248 initiative, aimed at expanding and marketing the county's technology jobs base, but lashed out at Dan Gilbert's recent prospecting north of 8 Mile Road.
Speaking to an audience of 140 technology firms at a tech firm's offices, Patterson told the techies:
"I'll fight to keep you here in Oakland County."
Then, in a direct shot at Gilbert, Patterson added: "Are you listening Dan?" evoking laughter from listeners, who included numerous Oakland County officials.
"I would be more impressed with Mr. Gilbert's efforts if he were to bring in high-tech companies from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois rather than looking through the fertile vineyards of Oakland County," Patterson said.
Late Wednesday, Gilbert's spokeswoman Carolyn Artman released a response from Gilbert.
"I would actually be more impressed if Brooks had gotten his facts correct," said Gilbert in the statement. "Of the more than 120 technology companies that have opened shop in SE Michigan's leading high-tech corridor along Woodward in downtown Detroit, more than 100 of them were launched right in the heart of the region's urban core.
"However, we did recently 'woo' a large financial institution's regional HQ from the 'fertile vineyards of Oakland County,' " Gilbert added. "In all seriousness, it would be much more productive if we could all work together to grow the region and state, leaving the divisive politics of the past in the past where they belong. Are you listening, Brooks?"
Gilbert has lured numerous employers to his renovated buildings in Detroit's reviving downtown. Last week, Fifth Third Bank announced it would move its regional headquarters from Southfield to Gilbert's One Woodward Building, the Yamasaki-designed skyscraper at West Jefferson, built to hold the headquarters of the former Michigan Consolidated Gas utility — now part of DTE Energy.
Oakland County has been widely hailed for effectively branding its economic development initiatives, as the county replaces lost manufacturing jobs with knowledge-based employers.
Prior to tech248, which plays off the county's telephone area code, branding included Medical Main Street, a trademarked term for the county's health care and life-sciences job base; and Automation Alley, a high-tech group of largely auto-oriented companies.
Oakland County has become the home of about 100 tech companies in the past 10 years, investing more than $586 million and creating more than 10,500 jobs, said Steve Huber, spokesman for Oakland County Economic Development and Community Affairs.
The focus includes software development, network and data, health, game development, connected cars, digital media, mobile technology, cyber security and other evolving technologies, Huber said. Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com or 313-223-4485
Brooks Patterson doesn't want Dan Gilbert to take Oakland County's jobs
Posted By Ryan Felton on Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 2:44 PM
click to enlarge
Courtesy photo
Metro Detroit was aflutter last night when Detroit Free Press reporter Bill Laitner filed a dispatch from a meeting where Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson opened his mouth. Patterson was on-site to talk about Oakland's new tech initiative — a new county brand, or something? — when he said this:
“I’ll fight to keep you here in Oakland County,” Patterson said. “Are you listening Dan? I would be more impressed with Mr. Gilbert’s efforts if he were to bring in high tech companies from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois rather than looking through the fertile vineyards of Oakland County.”
Oakland officials were apparently so pleased by these remarks that they stuck them in a press release for other news outlets to pick up on. It's important, see: Patterson is concerned about downtown Detroit's business moguls poaching companies from north of Eight Mile. After decades of watching businesses flee Detroit for the suburbs, it appears that trend is beginning to reverse.
That scares Brooks. So he said something, and he wanted Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans and keeper of lots of money, to hear him.
Gilbert, Laitner reports, shot back late Wednesday:
Gilbert said in a statement that "I would actually be more impressed if Brooks had gotten his facts correct. Of the more than 120 technology companies that have opened shop in SE Michigan's leading high-tech corridor along Woodward in downtown Detroit, more than 100 of them were launched right in the heart of the region's urban core.
"However, we did recently 'woo' a large financial institution's regional HQ from the 'fertile vineyards of Oakland County,' " Gilbert added. "In all seriousness, it would be much more productive if we could all work together to grow the region and state, leaving the divisive politics of the past in the past where they belong. Are you listening, Brooks?"
Patterson's paranoia comes as no surprise. This sort of entrenched sentiment has been brewing over the last couple of years. As I wrote for Jalopnik last year, Macomb County lost its mind when ad agency Campbell-Ewald decided to ditch the plain Macomb landscape for some space in downtown Detroit. It's easy to imagine the creative minds at Campbell-Ewald are now feeding more off of downtown's synergy than they were while situated on Earle Memorial Highway.
That decision last year also prompted one writer to declare that metro Detroit's suburbs need a full-throttled defense strategy to prevent this kind of thing from continuing to happen. Because, really, haven't you noticed how well our feudal system of municipalities works in metro Detroit? Hello!
I'm kidding, of course.
There are good reasons to argue in support of regionalism. And, it's OK for Warren to be Warren, as Jeff Wattrick noted on Deadline Detroit last year — just as it's OK for Oakland County to be what it was likely intended to be in the first place: an area comprised mostly of bedroom communities.
It also makes sense because, as a Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland study I cited in the Jalopnik piece found, metropolitan regions that have managed to grow over the last three decades have maintained a steady population in its core. Regions with a declining population disproportionately saw losses in its core, which has been the case in metro Detroit. From the Fed study:
"Evidence suggests that denser [metropolitan statistical areas] are more productive. We have shown that population loss at the MSA level tends to be associated with a drop in population density at the core of the MSA. A question for future research is whether core density is particularly important for productivity or if the average level of population density across the MSA is all that matters. If core density is important for productivity, then it might be important for policymakers across the entire MSA to consider measures aimed at keeping the center city densely populated.
Of course, policymakers need to take into consideration the desire that individual households may have for low-density housing far from the city center and weigh it against the productivity advantages of density. In some respects, by promoting a dense core, they may just be undoing or counteracting policy incentives that are already in place and distorting individuals' natural behaviors."
In other words, if policymakers here recognize the benefits of a dense regional core, as it relates to productivity, then they need to support policies that increases Detroit's population. But for Patterson, that's no good. He has a triple-A bond rating he must maintain.
On that note, here's South Park's take on the situation.
Tom Walsh: Innovation could be what drives Detroit's economic growth
A Brookings white paper states that the 4.3 square-mile area of
Woodward Avenue from downtown Detroit to Midtown comprises just 3.1% of
the city's land area — yet is has nearly 55% of the city's jobs and 11%
of the business establishments. / Mary Schroeder/Detroit Free Press
Get ready to start hearing the term “innovation district” a lot in
Detroit, starting with a meeting Thursday of civic, business and
philanthropic foundation leaders.
Flying in to attend and speak at
the meeting will be Bruce Katz, director of the Washington, D.C.-based
Brookings Institution’s metropolitan policy program.
In a
Brookings white paper to be released Monday, Katz and co-author Julie
Wagner cite Detroit early and often, as one of a group of U.S. cities
that are actively exploring urban innovation districts — as opposed to
suburban corridors of isolated corporate technology campuses in places
like Silicon Valley — as emerging drivers of future economic growth.
“We
think Detroit may be one of the few places that gets out ahead of this
trend,” Katz told me last week, “based on what we’re seeing now,
spinning off of the medical centers in Midtown, plus what
Dan Gilbert
and Quicken Loans are doing downtown, and the potential of the M1 Rail
project to link those clusters.”
In the paper titled “The Rise of
Innovation Districts: A New Geography of Innovation in America,” a full
page is devoted to Detroit, including a map of downtown and Midtown,
locating spots from the Compuware and M@dison buildings to the College
for Creative Studies and Wayne State University.
Where business thrives
What exactly do they mean by an “innovation district”?
First off, it is not
a government handout program, such as the Empowerment Zones created by
Congress in the mid-1990s to funnel grants, tax credits, bonding
authority and other benefits to highly distressed communities.
Rather,
innovation districts, as defined by Brookings, are “urban enclaves that
cluster leading-edge anchor institutions with startups and spin-off
companies, business incubators and accelerators in the relentless
pursuit of cutting-edge discoveries for the market.”
Most activity
that fits that description in Detroit is clustered in a corridor along
Woodward, from the riverfront up to the New Center area. “Today,” the
Brookings paper states, “the entire 4.3-square-mile area comprises just
3.1% of the city’s land area — yet is has nearly 55% of the city’s jobs
and 11% of the business establishments.”
Does this focus on
downtown and Midtown suggest that the other 97% of Detroit’s
neighborhoods, parks and commercial areas will be afterthoughts in the
city’s future economic development strategy?
Not necessarily.
For
one thing, said Katz, innovation districts can emerge in distinctly
different forms, depending on each city’s unique assets and geography.
Boston has transformed its old seaport area, adding 6,000 jobs there,
even while the Cambridge Kendall Square area across town — anchored by
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — has spawned scores of new
startup companies and led to the building of 1,000 housing units in the
past decade.
Laura Trudeau, the Kresge Foundation’s managing
director for the Community Development and Detroit programs, noted that
efforts to spark and support entrepreneurship in Detroit have begun to
spread beyond the core city and into the neighborhoods. She cited the
New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan’s new NEIdeas competition,
offering $500,000 in grants to 32 small existing neighborhood
businesses with good ideas that have potential to create jobs.
Focus on neighborhood
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, in his campaign for office and by his
actions during his first five months on the job, has put a big focus on
neighborhoods. Katz said Duggan can be a major force in shaping and
executing Detroit’s innovation district strategy. “Mayors can make a
huge difference,” Katz said, noting that former Seattle Mayor Greg
Nickels and former Boston Mayor Tom Menino steered key innovation
development to a rundown warehouse district and old waterfront area,
respectively, in their cities.
Detroit is poised to emerge from
its bankruptcy and long economic slide at an opportune time, Katz said,
because trends in open-source innovation and technology requires close
collaboration — and therefore proximity and density — among today’s
knowledge workers.
“The period of closed suburban complexes guarding their secrets is ending,” he said.
Katz
may be right about that, but it’s also clear that Detroit, a world
leader in innovation a century ago, is at a very early stage of defining
a new economic growth model.
The city has some key innovation
district ingredients — anchors and startups and incubators and committed
foundations — in place.
Now let’s see whether Duggan and his team
can replicate their early successes with accelerating blight-removal
and streetlight replacement efforts, when it comes to a strategy for
growing innovative, job-creating businesses.
Contact Tom Walsh: 313-223-4430, twalsh@freepress.com or on Twitter @TomWalsh_freep
Why Detroit Is Fertile Ground for an Innovation District
With 90-percent occupancy rates, 10,000 new jobs, a brand new
Whole Foods, and the repurposing of a long-abandoned GM building as a
design center, midtown-downtown Detroit—soon to be linked by a new rail
line—is poised to become the country’s next “innovation district,”
suggest Brookings Institution’s Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley in The New Republic this week.
What’s an innovation district? A metropolitan hub, they say:
“Where the density of innovative
institutions and companies … begets still more new businesses, new
products, new export opportunities, and new jobs.”
In Barcelona’s innovation district, for instance, 4,500 new
businesses and thousands of housing units sprang up in under a decade.
Katz and Bradley point to research arguing that, despite our ability to
network globally and work remotely, physical proximity among potential
collaborators is key to innovation. Urban density, therefore, makes for
the most fertile ground.
Even across the knowledge-intensive industries—biotech, telecomms,
semiconductors—there are so-called “spillover benefits” to being housed
so closely that chance encounters are within walking distance.
But Katz and Bradley say an innovation district is about more than those companies and industries:
“What really makes it hum is people, not
just those who live and work there, but also networks of leaders in
institutions like medical centers, philanthropies, non-profits, zoning
departments, and local businesses. These leaders need to be committed to
connecting an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a crew of first-rate
workers. They need to be knowledgeable about how to make real estate
development deals happen in urban areas, using the complex public and
private financing mechanisms that are often required before a market
fully takes off. Even after losing more than one million residents since
its peak, Detroit still has these people, and they are committed to the
city’s success, now more than ever.”
“This,” Katz and Bradley propose, “is how the Detroit economy could, slowly but surely, regain traction.”
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is seeking proposals from the general public on how to make Detroit a more vibrant and successful city. Applicants to the Knight Cities Challenge must submit their ideas by Nov. 14 to become eligible for a share of the $5 million in total prize money.
The money would be divided between winning submissions from the 26 cities in the nation where the Knight brothers once owned newspapers, and higher quality ideas are to receive the most money.
Proposals should focus on at least one of three subject matters: how to attract talented people to a city; how to "expand economic prospects and break down divides" and how to spur "connection and civic involvement."
An information session on the Knight Cities Challenge is set for 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday at NextEnergy, 461 Burroughs St. in Detroit. The application consists of just two questions and is available at knightcities.org.
