INTRO: The League of Conservation Voters held the most recent gubernatorial debate. A journalist each from the Detroit Free Press and Michigan Radio questioned 3 candidates. They asked about renewable energy, protecting wetlands and several other issues concerning the environment. Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus listened to the debate. Afterward, he asked about real estate, race and farming.
The candidates walked down from a theater stage and hung in the aisles. It was on the campus of Central Michigan University. Tom George is a medical doctor and State Senator from Kalamazoo.
The US Census Bureau says Detroit loses about 14,000 people a year. In this decade Wayne County’s population has gone down by 6%. Livingston County’s has gone up by 16%. People have followed investment and fled from disinvestment. But Senator George would not say the boom in the suburbs is connected to decline in the cities.
“People are not moving out to the suburbs right now. They’re shrinking. I don’t think the state needs to step in and restrict or prevent development. Because it’s just shrinking or lessening of its own.”
The Michigan Land Use Leadership Council of 2003 made 150 recommendations. One of them was “discourage state decisions and policies that subsidize and support sprawl.” Thomas Sugrue would agree. He’s a University of Pennsylvania professor of history and a native Detroiter. He writes about government policies from the 1940′s to the 1960′s. Highways tore up cities and farms. New communities were created for whites only. Sugrue says the pattern of build and abandon has now put city and suburbs in the same situation.
“You see houses in the Detroit suburbs have been on the market for a year, 2 or 2 and half years. You see strips of stores with lots of abandonment because the money is not there to support local businesses. And so you’re beginning to see in metropolitan Detroit, in a way that might make Detroit the canary in the mineshaft, a convergence between city and suburb.”
Senator Tom George has not read Sugrue’s book, The Origins of The Urban Crisis. George says Michigan’s main problem is a loss of jobs.
“Government is not gonna bring back 1 million jobs. That’s not government’s role. But government molds the environment that’s conducive to job growth. So what are some of those things that government needs to do? Invest in education. Fix the infrastructure. Keep our streets safe. But our government is broke.”
Another candidate at the debate was Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero. He’s offended several neighboring towns and townships. He says they hurt the city’s economy and their own when they build new malls, roads and hotels.
“I’m deeply concerned about our system of development. Our hole in the donut style of development. We hollow out our cities and promote sprawl. We suffer from that greatly. But oddly, ironically that wasn’t a question. There were no questions about sprawl or housing policy or urban development, urban growth boundaries.”
In addition to investing in cities, Mayor Bernero says he’ll focus on renewable energy programs.
“It’s not just saying we’re gonna do less of everything because we have less money. No. This is a priority. If we’re gonna get into this cleaner greener age that we want we’re gonna have to be able to make the tough choices and tough investments.”
Candidate Rick Snyder has the best conservation credentials of anyone in the race. He served on the board of the Nature Conservancy of Michigan.
“We need to be redeveloping our core cities. There’s a great opportunity there. We actually have available land and available infrastructure. So I tell people that when it comes to the issue of urban sprawl and going out to take new farmland or expand, people should be able to do that but they need to pay for it out of private funds. So the state shouldn’t be subsidizing roads or infrastructure.”
In the last election, several Kent County commissioners lost because they failed to fund farmland preservation. Says candidate Rick Snyder.
“Yeah that’s not on my agenda. I mean I think there are much more pressing issues that we need to deal with. Some of the things we’ve already covered about the restoration of our cities, again supporting farmers and better agricultural practice. So this whole issue of development rights with the economy the way it is today, there isn’t pressing demand to buy huge tracts of land to build new homes right now.”
“We have to be long sighted about this, not just look at immediate gratification but look at the long term.”
State Senator Patty Birkholz was on the Land Use Leadership Council. She got some of the recommendations passed into law. She leaves the Senate this year. She spoke near the capitol at an event put on by the Michigan Grocer’s Association.
“Farmland preservation is a crucial piece of land use planning in Michigan. We need to save our farms in order to save our cities. Those two work hand in hand. We need to be able to have farmers grow the crops, grow the corn and all the other crops while we develop in the cities. In order to do that there are times we need to help them so they can make sure the land is there for that crop growing.”