When is the last time you heard of a new city or town being planned and built in America? Imagine, a new gleaming city with well planned out housing, shopping, offices, parks, parking, transportation and infrastructure to fit the needs of the people in it. Hard to imagine right? Most new cites just kind of happen. They spring up from farm land around a new mall and between old brick and mortar downtowns, a collection of subdivisions and strip malls.
Here in Southeast Michigan, there are several old downtowns: Mt. Clemens, Utica, Rochester, Birmingham, Royal Oak, Ferndale, Clawson, Grosse Point and a few others. The rest of the "cities" were formed in the vast spaces in between creating an endless, faceless suburbia.This past fall a historic home on Rochester Road met its end to an onslaught of bulldozers to be turned into mixed residential, retail and restaurants. Do we really need another sprawling plaza with sidewalks that lead nowhere? Don't we already have enough empty store fronts? How does this fit into the overall big picture of Rochester Hills? This got me thinking about a subject I have always been passionate about: city planning. Most new subdivisions and strip malls seem like they are built to be their own private entity without thought of being part of a community. They have an entrance and exit onto a road and are required to build a sidewalk across the road front property. Often these sidewalks lead to nowhere and don't tie in with existing sidewalks or trails. Case in point, last summer a friend and I rode down the Clinton River trail from Rochester to Auburn Hills. On the way back we wanted to cross Adams and have lunch at the strip mall by Walmart. When the retail center was built across from the bike trail, there was no thought put into local bicycle or pedestrian traffic. There was no cross walk to be found. We had to navigate 10" high curbs and a grassy median to get across. Once across we couldn't find one bike rack anywhere! If you look at the attached photo, you will see there is a sidewalk across the front of that property that ends on the west side and doesn't tie into the community at all. Who is responsible for connecting the sidewalks: The Friends of the Clinton River Trail, the developer, the tax payers of Rochester Hills?
If you visit this area, you will also notice the many empty store fronts that have never been occupied. This ghost box (empty big box stores) problem is all over and yet more retail space keeps going up. Drive up and down Rochester Road and you will see empty store fronts from Hamlin to Avon. For an extreme example, go see the Bloomfield Park development on Telegraph that was never finished. Aren't we saturated enough already? I understand that it is the contractor's job to build new buildings but at what cost? How do these developments tie into the community? The more chain stores they build, the more we look like Main Street USA, indistinguishable from any other strip in America. Rochester and Rochester Hills boasts beautiful scenery, three rivers, miles of bicycle trails, two colleges, a historic downtown, diverse housing options and a variety of manufacturing business. How can we tie these all together to prevent us from looking like just another strip mall commuter suburb? Can we pass laws that require cities and developers to work together to create more walkable, linked in communities?
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