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Chapter VIII: Fitzgerald Plans
- University of Georgia Press
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Chapter VIII: Fitzgerald Plans VIII-1 Former Fitzgerald planner Owen Klugel philosophizes about alienation: Man is no longer in a position to shape his own environment. He Is not able to express himsell. It is shaped lor him, but the people who are shaping It don't really understand who they are shaping It tor. 141 142 Beauty in a neighborhood, as in an individual, is as much a spiritual as a physical quality. It is important not only that people find their neighborhood beautiful but that they contribute to making it so, for if not, they will soon feel isolated from their environment, no matter how physically glorious it might be. Americans today do not participate in planning and arranging their neighborhoods, and so do tend to be alienated from them. An architectural student at Fitzgerald's University of Detroit, Owen Klugel, has important insights into this problem: The problem is to present an environment that is completely flexible and adaptable, so that the environment adapts to the people and the people do not adapt to the environment. I could sit down right now and re-design Fitzgerald, say I have five billion dollars. By the time I designed Fitzgerald and got it built, the whole nature of the community would be changed and every individual in it would be changed. Weneed an environment that is changing with the people. The rugged individual idea still lingers, though we are getting more mass-produced. You see people planting their flowers and arranging their flower beds, or moving their chairs, or setting stones around trees. Those few little things they are able to manipulate in their environment. These are the only things in our environment that are variable. If a person were able to manipulate his whole house easily — colors, shapes, and textures — he would. Wehave the technology to enable him to do it. But we are a long way from this. The "primitives" were closer. Thus city planning is not the concern of the expert alone, but of all its people. It is not always easy for the people of a neighborhood to agree on what should be done, for a neighborhood is often composed of the widest imaginable variety of individuals. In Fitzgerald, social distances between the street people and the university people are vast. Students at the University of Detroit are very distant socially from the people on the streets immediately south of the campus. Boys from thesestreets have been jack rolling male dormitory students, who have threatened a retaliatory riot. It is no suprise that the University of Detroit receives some abuse. It is an alien white middle class island in a sea of black semi-employed factory workers. The University does not encourage its neighborhood to aspire to a college education or even to feel the campus is open to them. Even on one block, highly varied families and individuals live together. Take Petoskey Street. "Moochie" is a young man who was so rejected that he was wild by kindergarten and lost three fingers at the dairy on Puritan at five years old. He had to leave Fitzgerald School in the primary units. For all his troubles, he is still awarm and courageous personality. James Dillard was the initiator of a Little League Baseball Club and, the first year of the Santa Glaus parade, was the first black Santa thousands of kids had ever seen. One boy on the block robbed and killed the young filling station attendant at the Clark station on the east side of Livernois not a block from his home; the boy he killed was white and lived not two blocks away.TheGreenways on the same street have been threatened by the parents of the boy who killed the filling station attendant. Which Petoskey Street are we talking about? Which individual, distinct, and precious human being? From the campus, Petoskey Street might appear one solid threat, but this seeming uniformity is false, even prejudiced. The Fitzgerald Community Council has tried to involve many groups in the effort to beautify Fitzgerald. The Council interacts with many groups and societies within the community, but few of these interact with each other directly. For instance, the University and the businessmen do not communicate with each other, but the Council interacts with both. The Council's role is awkward due to the very breadth of its understanding. In talking to the university and explaining the merchants' needs, the University tends to project the Council itself into...