Comments on: Talent Talk http://www.thecenterformichigan.net/talent-talk/ Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:31:23 +0000 hourly 1 By: John Guidinger http://www.thecenterformichigan.net/talent-talk/comment-page-1/#comment-1143 John Guidinger Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:33:28 +0000 http://www.thecenterformichigan.net/blog/?p=1125#comment-1143 New York City reinvents itself using masses of immigrants that still flood into the crowded low rent districts in Queens, Brooklyn, and parts of Manhattan. These young people are willing to work hard for low wages in resturants, stores, and on construction sites. You see them everywhere, and you sit beside them on the subway cars going to and from work thinking and speaking in a multitude of languages and so weary at the end of the day. But they and their children produce a real city with real people and everything good and bad and exciting that comes with the human life drama. You soon realize that the whole city is immigrants at different stages - some newly arrived, some many generations after arrival. The live in dynamic neighborhoods, neighborhoods that change but never lose their human scale attractions of social interconnectivity, family, familiarity, and life-long relationships. The city has been populated for decades with these imgrants, many of whom have found happiness and meaning in their neighborhoods. Michigan needs cities with permanent populations and human scale neighborhoods like New York City. Our cities have no subways or transit, but many super highways that cut up cities into disjointed neighborhood fragmentss, roads that distroy cities with inhuman scale berms and dangerous lanes and eternal noise irritations, roads that lead out of the city and beckon everyone to leave. Until Michigan can develop stable human scale neghborhoods within cities served by subways and commuter trains instead of super roads, we will always be in a permant unstable flux. A great state must have great cities and great cities will always have bad parking and great transit. John Guidinger Jackson New York City reinvents itself using masses of immigrants that still flood into the crowded low rent districts in Queens, Brooklyn, and parts of Manhattan. These young people are willing to work hard for low wages in resturants, stores, and on construction sites. You see them everywhere, and you sit beside them on the subway cars going to and from work thinking and speaking in a multitude of languages and so weary at the end of the day. But they and their children produce a real city with real people and everything good and bad and exciting that comes with the human life drama. You soon realize that the whole city is immigrants at different stages – some newly arrived, some many generations after arrival. The live in dynamic neighborhoods, neighborhoods that change but never lose their human scale attractions of social interconnectivity, family, familiarity, and life-long relationships. The city has been populated for decades with these imgrants, many of whom have found happiness and meaning in their neighborhoods.

Michigan needs cities with permanent populations and human scale neighborhoods like New York City. Our cities have no subways or transit, but many super highways that cut up cities into disjointed neighborhood fragmentss, roads that distroy cities with inhuman scale berms and dangerous lanes and eternal noise irritations, roads that lead out of the city and beckon everyone to leave.

Until Michigan can develop stable human scale neghborhoods within cities served by subways and commuter trains instead of super roads, we will always be in a permant unstable flux. A great state must have great cities and great cities will always have bad parking and great transit.

John Guidinger
Jackson

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