Posted on 06/12/2009 11:11:02 AM PDT by Schnucki
Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
As we may have discussed before, Center City is still in good shape, and their has been some (not enough) improvement in the near North. See our heritage in Independence Park, hit a restaurant and do your shopping on Walnut Street, but don’t go north of the expressway or west of 30th Street Station unless you want to see the Fourth World.
Sounds good to me. The section 8 jerks can camp in a park or live in a tree.
Well, some of those places could use some pacification.
This idea in places like Detroit (iirc) where there are tens of thousands of empty houses, may not be a bad one.
Don't force cities to condemn private property.
bye bye property rights
Vee like being crowded into cities. You vill too.
The Kenyan has already bulldozed his way through The Constitution, so what’s a few cities here or there?
property rights? what’s that?
That’s so... old America.
it could also take the concept of Gerrymandering to a whole new level...
We'll have none of that talk. Now, run along little worker bee and get back to your assigned task in the hive.
Many of our large cities seem to not be able to sustain themselves. It’s usually blamed on some policy, stupidity, lack of planning, politics, demographics — something that was a mistake.
But maybe these large concentrations of people, streets and other things are inherently self-destroying, and that fixing the cities is not a matter of eliminating mistakes. Perhaps they reach a point where bulldozing and restarting is the only cure, along with a hope that the rebuilt cities will fare better.
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Cities like Buffalo, where I grew up are laid out for more than a half a million people, right now the population is south of two hundred and fifty thousand. There are neighborhoods falling apart and it would be nice if the city would just plow them over make some Olmsted like parks and imporve live in the city..
LOL
I worked at two offices in the area ( one block from K&A and Hunting Park) in 1999. Lots of boarded up homes and businesses then. It must be worse now, and the blight has probably moved further up Frankford Ave.
“Now, run along little worker bee and get back to your assigned task in the hive. “
Somebody needs to photoshop obama into a borg image...hehe
We're not shrinking in Texas, but if enough more Californians move here to vote in the stuff that killed California, all bets are off.
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