whats the deal with Southfield

[Michi]

Troy may be spraled out but I think it has the potential to build more dense and more urban, they just choose to build taller buildings first, there is a lot of vacant land left to be filled in, and there can be transformations of the many surface lots and houses along big beaver into more dense housing, retail, parking structures ect. My point is, there are already a good amount of taller buildings there as well as in SF and I don;t understand the NIMBYism agaings them because its not like they are going up in Wixom.

[Michi]

The Grosse Pointes also do not allow it in their master plans, therefore GP will remain as is.

St. Clair Shores has the Nautical Mile zoned as "Central Lakefront" which allows/encourages mixed use/high-density development. The reason it's there in the first place is because of the city's asset of the natural resource...the lake. In the master plan write up, it talks about a pedestrian friendly lakeside district that mimics well-known and successful waterfronts in major cities throughout the country.

[RustTown]

Well, they must be talking about Nautical Mile, because almost all of the canals and such on the other side are privately owned.

I have to continue to respectively disagree with you on your characterization of Troy, though. Troy was not built to be some Livonia, at least it didn't develop that way. Troy, for a few decades now, was built to be an office center, so I don't see how anything tall in Troy is out of the ordinary. Troy is not some Lyon or Chesterfield... which I could being a problem for high-rise development. To me, Troy was built as a more modern Southfield, a Southfield 2.0. IMO, there are quite a few other suburbs above Troy more deserving of the title of "most wasteful."

[Michi]

I don't disagree with that, but what I'm getting at is that you "don't move to Troy to live in a highrise". That's not Troy's residential purpose. Why all of a sudden are they creating that market, when A. residents don't want it and B. that's not the character Big Beaver offers?

I'm not fighting against planning for the future and striving for sense of place or sense of community. I'm thinking more regionally and less on the micro level, which seems to be this area's biggest problem. Don't be surprised if Auburn Hills pouts, "Hey no fair. Troy gets one of those. I want one too!" Afterall, with the addition of Diamler Chrylser and "The Auburn Mile", lord knows Auburn Hills is being built as the next office center, more modern than Troy, than Southfield, than Detroit. And the demise continues...