Smart Growth wasn't appeasement enough. Now the Luddites want to tear it all down.
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 ...
And how long before they turn the reclaimed ‘natural pristine’ land over to developers to create shiny new government housing projects for the sheeple?
Smart Growth wasn't appeasement enough. Now the Luddites want to tear it all down.
Let’s bulldoze DC.
You want to choose where you live? why not just set up a home in central park... Communities should be allowed to zone in an appropriate fashion and so long as the FED has nothing to do with the zoning I am ok with it..
It’s a microcosm of Libs plans for our whole society.
Tax and abort population out of existence, return it to nature to be more “sustainable.”
Si senor Obama. HAHAHA.
I don't believe 0bama when they say they won't force people to move, but IF they mean it, and I lived in the only livable house on a street, and the rest were being occupied by transients and rats, I think I'd like it if the city bulldozed those houses and planted trees, etc. Now, I have a choice of selling a house that may have some value because it's not in a demilitarized zone, or living in a country location.
The idea isn't bad. It all depends on how it's done.
Simply relocate the UN to Flint. Problem solved!
Does this include Washington, DC?
Wasn’t “Urban Renewal” a similar project from the ‘30’s that failed?
And why is this only being reported by a British news source?
Detroit is returning to the countryside on its own.there’s a great article online about a guy catching and eating raccoons
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090402/METRO08/904020395/To+urban+hunter++next+meal+is+scampering+by
The same nuts who a few weeks ago said all roofs need to be painted white.
It’s not the amount of people—it’s the people themselves, the ones who live in these blighted towns—they destroyed these cities—move the same people elsewhere and they’ll destroy the new city.
Now, I know that there are some decent people who were stuck in these cities when they went down the tubes-I don’t mean them—but the vast majority of the populace-it’s true as the sun coming up in the morning.
Most recently? New Orleans, 2005.
Post-Katrina, there was lots of talk about shutting down city services (police, firefighting, garbage pickup, etc.) to large portions of the city to force the city into a smaller "footprint".
Guess what, it ain't happening. The areas that were considered for "shutdown" actually were some of the "newer" portions of the flooded area, and therefore had houses built on monolithic slabs. Although the homes suffered horrible flood damage, they were deemed salvageable - and the city began buying up those houses through a number of straw-man purchasers, gutting and rebuilding the interiors. This like-new housing was made available to - you guessed it - low income families.
Ten to one, that's what the neighborhood organizer-in-chief has in mind: many houses in the designated areas won't be bulldozed at all, they'll be turned into replacements for public housing projects.
Think about it - parts of New Orleans are still, for all practical purposes, depopulated. In some areas, perhaps only one in ten property owners have repaired their homes, while the rest of the houses sit in ruins. Yet, that city isn't on the list. I think it's because the plan is already in motion there.
This idea that Americans were "free" in any way since the dawn of the 20th century is largely a myth.
In accordance with the prophecy:
“I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.” - William Jennings Bryan
What’s the status of American agriculture? And what’s growing in the streets of Detroit?
>>Shrink cities today, the population tomorrow?
“Soylent Green, its made of peeeooople . . . . >>
“You damn dirty apes ...”
(I know the latter line does not belong with the first, but I try to use every chance I get)
The City Where the Sirens Never Sleep
It should be required reading for every American who is involved in government at any level.
Hmmm, how about returning some of that Potomac bottomland back to Nature by making a Constitutionally small and limited Federal government seat in Nebraska?
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