Dueweke Speaks with Michigan Radio’s Stateside About the Decline of Business Districts in Neighborhoods Around Detroit
Lecturer in Urban and Regional Planning, Eric Dueweke, is featured on Michigan Radio’s Stateside with Lester Graham in a story titled “Future uncertain for most business districts outside of downtown Detroit” which addresses the small business districts throughout Detroit which were once thriving, and are now barely hanging on. Graham questions what to do with them now and speaks with residents and small business owners in MorningSide, one of the neighborhoods outside downtown Detroit.
Dueweke, a resident of MorningSide, shows Graham the Warren Avenue business strip and states “I’d guess 50 percent (of the businesses) are boarded up and then you see all these vacant spaces here. This is where buildings have recently been torn down. Really, this is a problem all over Detroit of ‘What do we do with our former retail strips that there really isn’t a demand for?’ People just don’t shop in these kinds of small businesses as much anymore.”
Demand is down because there is not as much wealth in the neighborhood. Firefighters, police officers, and teachers once owned the homes in MorningSide and have left. Today many of the people are renters and spend all their money on housing, thus they do not have the disposable income needed to sustain the small businesses.
For the full story: http://michiganradio.org/post/future-uncertain-most-business-districts-outside-downtown-detroit
