Talk:Novi, Michigan

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[edit] Twelve Oaks Mall

The article currently states that the Nordstrom in Twelve Oaks Mall is still under development. Nordstrom actually opened on 09/28/07. Kipp 18:53, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Railroad

Online reference to Railroad construction. Wixom was once part of Novi Township.

http://www.ci.wixom.mi.us/YourCommunity/history.html

Time period of railroad construction:

http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/Timeline/1870s/TimeLine1870sBackUp.htm

[edit] Parkland dates

The city was awarded a grant in 2005. The projects that included donations of parkland were approved in 2004 although the land was not officially donated until 2005/2006.

[edit] Census

The City is undertaking a special census that will be completed in 2006. There was no census in 2005. When the special census totals are available, it should be referenced separately. The 2000 numbers should be retained for comparative purposes.

[edit] Schools

Novi includes all or part of 4 school districts, not just Novi Schools. Information about the schools should go into their own article.

[edit] So-Called Similar Cities

I removed this section of the article due to the fact that I can hardly think of something more subjective than what city is more or less similar to Novi than another. If you want to look at how much money the residents make, check out Michigan locations by per capita income, where Novi ranks 32nd in Michigan. Segelflugzeugwettbewerber 03:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Naming of Novi

Person seeking citations, please note that citations for several of these items are already provided.

SunGodMTU added: This depot was the sixth stop on the line (No. VI), which is how the city received it's name. However this differs from recorded accounts. The name existed before the railroad came to the area. I suspect the account relating it to the depot number is a folk etymology. In History of Oakland County Michigan a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, its principal interests / compiled from the official records of the county, the newspapers and data of personal interviews, under the editorial supervision of Thaddeus D. Seeley. (1912) [1] the account is as follows: the residents of what in now Novi met in the autumn of 1830 to discuss detaching from Farmingham Township to form a separate township. "Dr. J.C. Emory, at the suggestion of his wife, proposed 'Novi.'" No mention is made of a railroad depot number, only that there was some ridicule about the name in Lating meaning "unknown", "not known" or "forgotten". Essentially the same version is presented in the History of Oakland County, Michigan., Durant, Samuel W. 1877 [2] (although the scanned page image is barely legible here) older≠wiser 14:12, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

As was noted in the article, neither the railroad or the toll road existed when the Township was named.

[edit] Japanese bookstores, etc.

This seems to be heading a bit far afield for the topic. I've consolidated this to remove the non-Novi specific information. If there's a Japantown topic, it would be more appropriate to link to that instead of using this topic to cover the entire Japantown topic.

Well there had been an article at Japantown, Novi, Michigan, which seemed at the very least misnamed. I tagged it with Template:Prod, but that was removed by another editor so I nominated it for deletion. The result was to merge. And so, although User:Tyrenius did about as good a job as could be expected with paring the article down before merging it, there is still quite a lot of unsourced content (which may also perhaps be entirely irrelevant to Novi as well). Go ahead and be bold. older ≠ wiser 02:41, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Urban sprawl

I've added the NPOV-section tag to this section, as it seems to be heavily biased.

While I don't disagree with most of the facts presented, the phrasing is clearly outside the realm of a neutral point of view, and should be cleaned up.

Kevin 04:12, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

It hardly seems accurate to "blame" or "credit" 12 Oaks Mall for the surrounding suburban sprawl when every adjacent community, which don't have retail on the scale of 12 Oaks Mall, have seen as much or more sprawl. Plus, 12 Oaks doesn't even provide the best example of sprawl. Across the street from the Mall is the 160 acre Toll Gate Farm and just down the road is over 600 acres of parkland, hardly examples of sprawl.

Thinking about this some more, an article on urban sprawl in Novi shouldn't focus on the mall. And the intro. already discusses the loss of open space and farmland in the city.

There was a paragraph on oversaturation that was removed along with the sprawl paragarph -- I didn't write it, and don't know whether it's accurate, but I thought I'd copy it here for someone else to edit/re-add:

The City of Novi is thought now to be experiencing an oversaturization of retail space, as can be witnessed in several retail developments that have relatively high vacancy rates, such as Novi Town Center (nearly 50% vacant) and the bankrupt "Main Street" project (never completed). At one point, developers of the Fountain Walk Mall had also filed bankruptcy. Furthermore, recent plans published in The Detroit News call for nearly 90,000sq. ft. of Fountain Walk to be demolished to be made more "pedestrian friendly". Most of the space slated for demolition never held a single tenant since completion in 2002. It remains to be seen if the additional retail floorspace at Twelve Oaks will be quickly occupied.

Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 04:23, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

There's a fair amount of research that would need to be completed before that paragraph could be put back, as well as NPOV rewording, and some weasel words would need to be fixed. For instance:
  • Who thinks that Novi is oversaturated? (some kind of published study would need to reflect this sentiment as being widely held among residents or urban engineers / other relevant professionals)
  • "Nearly 50% vacant" is not acceptable. The Mervyn's section is largely abandoned, but the rest of the Town Center has few vacancies. Again, this has to be verified somewhere.
  • Claiming the Fountain Walk developers filed for bankruptcy needs to be substantiated (e.g. [3])
  • The mention of "additional retail floorspace at Twelve Oaks" is somewhat ambiguous. There doesn't appear to be an abundance of available space at Twelve Oaks currently, and it naturally "remains to be seen" if the Nordstrom addition will be occupied, as it hasn't been built yet. So if we take the phrasing as current, it needs to be substantiated. If we take it to mean the new addition, then it's crystal balling. Kevin 07:04, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] October 21st Reversion

An anonymous Wikipedian made some minor changes to the phrasing of Novi's government. I'm reasonably sure that the person was well-intentioned, as "weak mayor" may appear offensive / POV. However, the delegations of authority in Novi do suggest that the mayor is "weak" in terms of authority prescribed by the city's charter. Thus, the mayoral office is "weak" because appointments and other matters have to be approved by the city council, rather than the mayor having unilateral authority.

Perhaps someone with a better understanding of Novi's charter could re-write this? Kevin 05:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

"Weak mayor" is neither offensive or POV. It's a standard description for Novi's form of government. In Novi, the mayor doesn't exercise additional powers outside those of the other council members. It's clearly different than a strong mayor system. Someone could try working in the links to explain the differences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_mayor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council-manager_government

I don't disagree at all. I'm just willing to believe that people who are less familiar with different political systems may misinterpret it. The fact that it makes sense to you and me doesn't necessarily mean that it makes sense to everyone. Kevin 05:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

That's why I suggested incorporating the links for those unfamiliar with the concept. I'm not sure how you would otherwise describe the differences without writing an extended explanation that would be out of place in this article.

[edit] Famous People

Quite a few athletes live in Novi including Nick Lidstrom among others:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070123/SPORTS14/701230385/1048/BUSINESS05

What's the criteria for including them?

The criteria can be found at WP:Notability (people), though I would be careful about how complete the list is, as it may be seen as arbitrary. Personally, I'd use their articles as a lithmus. If they have their own article on Wikipedia and it is more than a stub, they pass the notability test pretty well. Kevin 09:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Paved Over

Describing farms and open spaces as "paved over" accurately describes what has happened to those places. "Development" white-washes that by using something so generic in description that it could mean just about anything. Claiming that language is NPOV and "paved over" is not reflects the bias of those undoing the edit. "Paved over" is a fact, not a viewpoint. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.216.129.247 (talk) 00:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

One of the inherent problems with using the term "paved over" is that it would literally need to be true. You could describe a farm as being "paved over" if it had, in fact, been turned in to a parking lot. However, suggesting that all farms in Novi and all open spaces in Novi have been "paved over" is patently false, and is clearly phrased to convey a specific point of view.
Perhaps more importantly, it would need to be true and documented by trusted sources. If you can find a Detroit News article (for example) that says "The City of Novi used to have a vast expanse of farms and open spaces, all of which have now been replaced by concrete and asphalt," we'd have something here.
Consider your own statement, in saying that "development" is a term that "white-washes". Your agenda seems fairly obvious. Kevin 05:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Your comments ignore the context of the description. The section discussed parks and natural areas. Those places are notable today because of the scarcity of such sites in the city and the unique quality of resources that they contain. In that context, explaining why they are so unique is relevant to the understanding of such places. That's why the original language that talked about those places being lost to development was appropriate. The term "paved over" is likely to be viewed by some as inflammatory but it is nevertheless a statement of fact. Would the statement "largely paved over" meet your objections? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.222.66.164 (talk) 02:46, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

As you can see in previous discussions, parks and undeveloped land in Novi are not scarce. When considering this type of statement, we have to take the entire city as a whole. If you were making reference to the Grand River / Novi Road corridor, I'm sure you could easily find consensus for your point of view. However, when you take in to consideration the stretches of open land between 10 Mile and 8 Mile from Beck to the Wixom / Lyon Township borders, it is clear that the majority of the city is not "paved over". -- Kevin 15:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The area that you describe does not constitute a majority of the area of the city and is hardly representative of Novi as a whole. Also, these statistics from Oakland County show that in fact, over 50% of the land in the city, a majority of land, has been converted from open space and farmland into roads and developed land.

http://www.oakgov.com/peds/assets/docs/luz_docs/sum2006_50.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.216.127.190 (talk) 04:40, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I get a server error when I try to click that link. However, for the sake of argument, I'll accept that over 50% of the available land in Novi has been developed. That's still a very far cry from "paved over", and is statistically meaningless unless you compare it to every other city in southeast Michigan. -- Kevin 05:21, 15 October 2007 (UTC)