Livonia to draw line with Northville - Crain's Detroit Business

Livonia to draw line with Northville - Crain's Detroit Business

This is a very interesting article about the long legal battle between Northville and Livonia regarding some property that used to be (I think) a state mental hospital, but has been shut down for years. The whole controversy points to something I have been saying for a while, that maybe we don't need the number layers of government that we have. This development company has been playing off Livonia and Northville, and you see that all the time, with the tax breaks given to companies to settle in one place over another, the differences in police and fire forces because cities are different, the differences in schools because of a boundary line. Sub-optimal decisions are made because more decisions have to be made and different organizations can be coerced into making sub-optimal decisions buy companies or people that know how to play the game. I can't say I know the answer, but the idea of regional authorities for certain things does make sense on a lot of decisions.

Here is one idea. I think we should have a moratorium on greenfield building in the state. Instead of increasing our sprawl problem, we should go back into older areas and refresh them. Then, leave more green space outside the cities unspoiled. But if one city says they are not going to let any more greenfield building be done, then developers, smartly, would move to the next city, and the first city loses on the potential growth. To the developers, a few miles one way or another doesn't matter. But if the region says, we are not going to allow greenfield building, if you want to build new homes or businesses in this area, refurbish existing areas. Then developers have to do what is right for the region if they want to do business there, and more areas are refurbished, more green spaces preserved.