> One thing I noticed was that walkability wasn’t priced in the rents at all since after a 1 mile walk from the city center, studio apartments were about 800$ (2024) whereas in the city center itself it was more like 1100$ IIRC. In my view going 300$ while just having a 1 mile walk seems like a steal.
A surprising number of people in the state would not consider 1 mile 'walkable'. I'm not saying I agree with that, however in general our car culture and the related urban design means it can be a PITA for a lot of people to live their lives without one.
> MSU is massive nowadays. It’s crazy how big it is. It feels like an actual town. I wonder how big it was then.
For whatever it's worth, MSU was still more of an agricultural college than anything back then. Heck, one of my ancestors actually got indoor plumbing installed by the college as part of a study into how it could benefit the life of a farmer.
My father actually went there near the end of that era, I can ask him for some stories this weekend when we do breakfast. Will be 20ish years off but while it was handled by the 'Board of Agriculture'.
> The car manufacturing culture in Michigan in general is a low-key tourist worthy thing to check out (e.g. in the Detroit Institute of Art)
The DIA has Diego Rivera's mural, worth also noting the Detroit Historical Museum has an example of part of an older style body-on-frame line alongside a lot of other interesting automotive history bits. (Also, in general other important sections for parts of our history, The basement even captures the 1800's cobblestone aesthetic.) Both the Motown and Riot exhibits are worth a good visit.
In general the state has one of the most curious meshes of industrial and rural/agricultural history, between the mining towns in the UP, the Logging towns in the norther LP, the farming history in much of the LP, and the 'Arsenal of Democracy' that was Detroit.
> A surprising number of people in the state would not consider 1 mile 'walkable'.
In a surprising number of American cities, 1 mile is not walkable, simply because no one thought to put in a sidewalk or have adequate protection for pedestrians. That goes double for places like Lansing, where the sidewalks that are there are often icy during the winter.
Well, it wasn’t where I was as I walked my miles daily. But it was a breath of fresh air compared to Haslett. Haslett reminded me that the walkability of REO town to the Michigan State Capitol seems more like a coincidence than intentional urban planning. Because Haslett often lacked any sidewalks.
I remember one time walking to the Lidl for a 6 mile roundtrip. I think it was the first time when I realized why Americans don’t walk. That walk was one bad experience while nothing bad was happening. For contrast: I live near Amsterdam my whole life.
I live about 90 minutes north of Lansing in a town at about the same latitude as Toronto. Weather-wise, the problem isn't the ice. It's the snow accumulation, the cold. For about 3 months out of the year, you're lucky if it's at -7 C or higher.
It's also just that nothing is structured for it. Homes are built relatively far away from businesses and shops due to zoning, and stroads are the common way to get between the two. And where the stroads end, rural roads begin. It's structured not to be walkable not just at the large city level, but at the small city and town level, too. Our infrastructure is dictated by what the people in the 1940s thought, and they were extremely wrong about a great many things.
A surprising number of people in the state would not consider 1 mile 'walkable'. I'm not saying I agree with that, however in general our car culture and the related urban design means it can be a PITA for a lot of people to live their lives without one.
> MSU is massive nowadays. It’s crazy how big it is. It feels like an actual town. I wonder how big it was then.
For whatever it's worth, MSU was still more of an agricultural college than anything back then. Heck, one of my ancestors actually got indoor plumbing installed by the college as part of a study into how it could benefit the life of a farmer.
My father actually went there near the end of that era, I can ask him for some stories this weekend when we do breakfast. Will be 20ish years off but while it was handled by the 'Board of Agriculture'.
> The car manufacturing culture in Michigan in general is a low-key tourist worthy thing to check out (e.g. in the Detroit Institute of Art)
The DIA has Diego Rivera's mural, worth also noting the Detroit Historical Museum has an example of part of an older style body-on-frame line alongside a lot of other interesting automotive history bits. (Also, in general other important sections for parts of our history, The basement even captures the 1800's cobblestone aesthetic.) Both the Motown and Riot exhibits are worth a good visit.
In general the state has one of the most curious meshes of industrial and rural/agricultural history, between the mining towns in the UP, the Logging towns in the norther LP, the farming history in much of the LP, and the 'Arsenal of Democracy' that was Detroit.