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The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.
The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.
Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.
Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.
In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.
"The real question is not whether these cities shrink we're all shrinking but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said Mr Kildee. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity."
Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was "both a cultural and political taboo" about admitting decline in America.
"Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They're at the point where it's better to start knocking a lot of buildings down," she said.
Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, was the original home of General Motors. The car giant once employed 79,000 local people but that figure has shrunk to around 8,000.
Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent and the total population has almost halved to 110,000.
The exodus particularly of young people coupled with the consequent collapse in property prices, has left street after street in sections of the city almost entirely abandoned.
In the city centre, the once grand Durant Hotel named after William Durant, GM's founder is a symbol of the city's decline, said Mr Kildee. The large building has been empty since 1973, roughly when Flint's decline began.
Regarded as a model city in the motor industry's boom years, Flint may once again be emulated, though for very different reasons.
But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that "big is good" and that cities should sprawl Flint covers 34 square miles.
He said: "The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there's an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they're shrinking, they're failing."
But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.
If the city didn't downsize it will eventually go bankrupt, he added.
Flint's recovery efforts have been helped by a new state law passed a few years ago which allowed local governments to buy up empty properties very cheaply.
They could then knock them down or sell them on to owners who will occupy them. The city wants to specialise in health and education services, both areas which cannot easily be relocated abroad.
The local authority has restored the city's attractive but formerly deserted centre but has pulled down 1,100 abandoned homes in outlying areas.
Mr Kildee estimated another 3,000 needed to be demolished, although the city boundaries will remain the same.
Already, some streets peter out into woods or meadows, no trace remaining of the homes that once stood there.
Choosing which areas to knock down will be delicate but many of them were already obvious, he said.
The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee.
"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution "defeatist" but he insisted it was "no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again".
It's a pretty clever and necessary idea. Rather than stubbornly assume that you can get people to come back to your shitheap of a city, concentrate the remaining population and, thus, services, in the best remaining sections. That'll at least give you a decent base upon which to attract business back to your city, plus you cut sprawl. Win-win for everyone.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
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Blindy had this to say about Tron:
Getting this out of the way - They're taking people's LAND at GUNPOINT and then DESTROYING THEIR PROPERTY no sir this will not stand.
you poor conservative fool. the needs of the people come second to the needs of the government and the land.
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Nobody really understood why Blindy wrote:
I PAY TAXES if i want to own a blighted property and do nothing with it IT IS MY RIGHT. OH SHIT there is a hobo living in my blighted property, I'm gonna call the police every couple of nights to kick them out!
YOU HEARTLESS APE can you not see the plight in his eyes?! We owe it to each other to be merciful and modest! The poor and addicted deserve our money!
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Mr. Parcelan's account was hax0red to write:
YOU HEARTLESS APE can you not see the plight in his eyes?! We owe it to each other to be merciful and modest! The poor and addicted deserve our money!
Yeah :)
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Blindy booooze lime pole over bench lick:
Getting this out of the way - They're taking people's LAND at GUNPOINT and then DESTROYING THEIR PROPERTY no sir this will not stand.
Actually, the way this is being handled in most places is pretty snappy and entirely respectful of property rights.
Rather than abuse eminent domain, cities simply retract the zoning of city services and bulldoze already-vacant areas. People who persist in living outside the "city" suddenly find themselves in the suburbs (although I'd wager they still have to pay city taxes...) which is really no worse than starting out in the suburbs and finding yourself in the city a decade later.
It's funny how completely you misunderstand the things I believe. You're so far off base that even your lampooning seems to be making fun of totally unrelated ideas.
I'd take the time to explain it to you, but I'm almost certain that you don't even care to hear it. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 06-29-2009 at 10:16 PM.
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Blindy. stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
HE HAD THE SAME CHANCES I DID when I was born in a middle class neighborhood and attended some of the best schools HE CHOSE HIS LIFE.
I knew a girl once who actually thought like that. She once told me, "When I was growing up I went to school and got an education and and then got a stable job after college. There's no reason poor people can't do the same thing."
She grew up in Malibu and here parents were realtors that specialized in 5 million dollar + houses during the housing boom.
