Talk:Ann Arbor, Michigan

Archive

Aside from the ongoing Greenbelt issue and other minor details, please click here to see the discussion before the article was featured. Pentawing 17:09, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

Religion

I'd like to see us add a religion section to the Ann Arbor article. The city was the birthplace of The Word of God community in the late 70's/early 80's which is WIDELY considered to be the progenitors of the charismatic Catholic movement worldwide. Plus, there's this whole hostility towards Domino's Tom Monaghan drama which ultimately resulted in him choosing to move much of his operations to Naples Florida. The underlying subtext was the local government's antipathy for Monaghan's conservative politics and in-your-face Catholicism. Big Daddy 14:58, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Greenbelt

I notice that anonymous user 65.7.205.127 has just made some additions to the last paragraph of the history section, dealing with the Greenbelt. However, I find these a bit confusing and maybe misleading. The user notes that the city is only permitted to buy development rights, but I was under the impression that the city could buy either development rights, or buy the land outright, as it saw fit. Also, the addition of the last two sentences to the paragraph is a bit misleading. Here are the sentences: The Greenbelt has been particularly divisive, because the purchase of merely the development rights does not allow city residents actually to use the undeveloped land in any fashion. Furthermore, some have complained this is merely a thinly veiled attempt by residents to increase their housing values and to limit the access of the poor to Ann Arbor area property ownership. The first sentence is misleading because, as I understand it, the ferocity of the debate has had little to do with whether or not residents can use the Greenbelt land for, say, recreation purposes. The second sentence just seems kind of POV unless opposing viewpoints are incorporated. Overall, given that this is supposed to be a very quick trawl through the city's history, I think that the paragraph worked better before the new material was added. Ropcat 23:10, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I moved it over to the history sub-article. But now that you mentioned the POV issue, I think it should be reworded or removed outright. Pentawing 23:13, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Thing is, I more or less agree with what the anon wrote. The greenbelt, if I understand it, does mean that only the city can decide to use the land for anything but recreation. So just adding that clarification fixes that part of the anon's wording. The next part is fairly standard greenbelt economics. It is fairly accepted that the greenbelt will drive prices up for people that already have houses built. A development econonomics textbook could probably confirm that. Now the way it is phrased is POV, but it seems largely correct. That said, only a little more detail should go in about the greenbelt, and maybe move it to the economics and development type info instead of history. - Taxman ^Talk 16:31, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

• On your first point: Why couldn't the city use the land it buys outright for recreation? Obviously, the land for which it buys only development rights it can't use for recreation; presumably that would remain farmland or whatever it currently is, according to the preferences of the land's owner. Regarding your second point, on rising prices: that's true, unless the city increases density in already-developed areas. There are actually three parties to the debate: 1.) pro-greenbelt, pro-increased density people (who want to ameliorate the rise in housing costs caused by a greenbelt by raising the supply of housing through taller buildings and in-fill development); 2.) pro-greenbelt, anti-growth people (who don't seem to have a plan to prevent spiraling housing costs; these are mostly from either environmental organizations or are people who don't want to lose the traditional "human scale" of downtown through taller buildings); 3.) anti-greenbelt folks (which includes parties that normally aren't in alliance: namely advocates for the poor and for low-cost housing, and big developers who construct new housing in the outskirts). The greenbelt plan pitted groups 1 and 2 against group 3; the proposed greenway plan (distinct from the greenbelt issue) is pitting groups 1 and 2 against each other. Ropcat 20:58, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
  • The first part is basically what I was saying. I agreed land it buys outright can be used for recreation, but I used enough complicated sentence structure that it wan't immediately obvious. Using it for recreational areas certainly wont curb the rising prices issue, it will probably tend to make property in the city more valuable of course. Don't forget in your group 2 are people that want to have the property values increase, including most current property owners. I'm not familiar with the greenway plan. But in any case, our hashing out the issue here only helps so much. What we really need are reputable sources to draw the material from to add to the article if needed. Do you know of the best places to document this besides the Ann Arbor News? If I'm not misunderstanding, the city is referring to this as the PROS plan right? This would be a good start if so. - Taxman ^Talk 22:23, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I think the Ann Arbor greenbelt should probably get its own article, rather than delving into pretty complex land-use issues in lengthy fashion on the main Ann Arbor article. Regarding sources: I think the Ann Arbor Observer has run pieces on this, too. (There was one particular piece that presented the mayor as being basically a puppet for the president of the local Sierra Club.) As far as motivations: I'm not sure there's any way to tell for sure whether most homeowners voted for the plan out of a desire to raise their own property values, or out of ecological concern, or out of a sense that sprawl was sucking vitality out of the city center. The votes of renters might be some sort of barometer: if renters mostly voted in favor of the plan, it would necessarily have been out of some motivation other than buoying their real-estate investments. Even for those opposed to the plan, though, there were a lot of motivations in addition to the house-price issue: for instance, some people charged that the plan was poorly thought out and was rushed onto the ballot before important technical questions were answered; others were sprawl opponents who thought the plan would feed leap-frog development; and still others liked the greenbelt concept but thought it shouldn't be adopted without some formal commitment to high density, in order to prevent the greenbelt from becoming a tool of no-growth advocates. Interesting debate, and it would probably make a good Wikipedia article. Ropcat 22:45, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, now that I think of it, the article doesn't need anything more than at most one sentence more about the greenbelt. Have at it for a larger article on it. I think we have one or two stub articles on the general concept. In general, should we have a little more coverage of the environmental activism and involvement of the city in environmental efforts? We have a bit, but not as much as perhaps we should given the relative importance of that in the city. - Taxman ^Talk 17:29, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks, I'll probably start an article on this, but not for the next couple weeks yet. I agree with you that we might want a sentence or so on environmentalism in Ann Arbor. I wonder if there's some "factoid" that might illustrate this, so it's not just a vague assertion. Were there any early environmentalist measures in the city (out ahead of the national curve)? Or are there measures now that seem to have more teeth than in most places? Not sure quite how to illustrate the city's environmentalist sympathies, but it would be good to do... Ropcat 18:19, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Other matters

For the restaurant notation, it could probably be best to place it into the culture section, though I am also seeing some legitimate reasons to place it in the economy section. Pentawing 22:41, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

Either way, it relates to the other, so I agree with the culture I think. That's part of what people think of when they think of Ann Arbor's culture is the Main street and other restaurants. - Taxman ^Talk 22:44, September 8, 2005 (UTC)