Airport City, Michigan
This article about the idea for “Airport City” to be developed between Detroit Metro and Willow Run Airports, I-94 and the Detroit-Chicago railroad corridor has been sitting in my “to blog” pile for awhile.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Michigan economy and what the possibilities are, including what it would take to get people like me (young, educated, creative) to stay in the state or return. I’ve often thought if I could line up enough contract work I could do from anywhere (thank you, Internet) I would seriously consider a return, since interesting job prospects are remote. Housing is a hell of a lot cheaper, family is near by and the airport means your close to almost anywhere (and since you’re saving so much on housing, you can afford a trip here and there).
I’ve also been closely watching small companies like 37 Signals and CivicActions whose structure explicitly spurn the idea that, even in a very small company, all the employees must be in the same space. A place like airport city, with cheap office and storage space, with easy access to shipping and transportation, would make a great HQ for such a company (where the HQ is likely to be one to five people) and for those who work in such companies. I hope this great idea doesn’t get killed by the dysfunctional politics of the region and state before it gets its feet.
April 3rd, 2006 at 8:43 am
I’m personally pretty skeptical of the “Aerotropolis” plan - it sounds suspiciously like “let’s abandon Detroit/Ypsi/Romulus/Taylor/Dearborn/etc. and channel all of our economic development efforts into cornfields!
I don’t disagree with the idea that the airports are an important node in southeast Michigan, nor do I disagree that we need to make better use of them (starting with good, fast, reliable transit access to DTW from other activity nodes). And, really, I don’t disagree with any of the points you make above.
What I disagree with is the idea that the area between the airports is where this needs to happen - it’s a desperate and unnecessary attempt to find a blank slate to drop this plan into, imagining that the airports are the only amenities that currently exist (possibly because the progenitors of the idea aren’t creative/brave enough to tackle the actually existing situation?)
Sprouting an Aerotropolis in that empty area on the map won’t do anything for Michigan’s situation in the long run - at best, you’re just striking another match that might burn for a little while longer than the other ones, rather than taking advantage of the flames you’ve already got before they go out.
July 3rd, 2006 at 6:23 pm
you bring up a good point about the aerotropolis being an abandonment of downtown or some of the other surrounding areas, but i really dont see it as that. to me it seems more like the right spot at the right time (or close to it). there is no way that the infastructure in detroit is capable of supporting any type of major growth.
Downtown has its place, sporting events, casinos, and it may be a fit for some businesses. But the aerotropolis could support big business as well as smaller businesses and give them a serious competitive advantage. The closest US city to an aerotropolis is memphis with its FEDEX hub. Businesses in memphis have fedex pick up times as late (or early) as 1 a.m. for delivery that day. If my FEDEX pick up at my business was any where close to that i could blow my competitors out of the water.
The aerotropolis is not a diversion from the surrounding areas but a neccesity for those surround areas to survive. its like Henry Fords assembly plant in 1905 on steroids.
July 4th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Uh, been to Detroit lately? It’s got all the infrastructure it needs - or, at least, it’s got a lot closer to the “necessary” infrastructure than Van Buren Township does. In Detroit, things need a little spit and polish to bring them up to maximum capacity, and maybe another border crossing and intermodal freight transfer station. (So I’m told, on that last.) The blank spot on a map where Aerotropolis is proposed needs all that stuff anyways, and more, since the airports are in no way the _only_ important infrastructure around. We’ve got a shit-ton of infrastructure sitting around rusting - why replicate that unnecessarily?
I have no complaints with your comment on FedEx in Memphis - as far as I’m concerned, you’re completely correct on that: businesses that do small/individual shipments and rely on fast service, which is an increasing number of them, benefit immensely from access to airports. I just don’t think you need to build a new city-region to do that. How far are downtown and the New Center from DTW? Easily under half an hour, at least the way my wife drives it. Distance is not the barrier here.
Michigan’s had enough experience with trying to build anew rather than leveraging what it’s got that we should know better by now. Let’s take the ideas behind aerotropolis and apply the built capital we’ve already got to them.