Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The Great Contraction Continues

It's getting so bad out there that some cities are razing entire neighborhoods.

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive.
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.


By Tom Leonard in Flint, Michigan
Published: 6:30PM BST 12 Jun 2009


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.

snip

They are planning on razing over four thousand homes in Flint Michigan alone and there are plans being developed to do the same in over 50 US cities, most of which are in the "Rust Belt"

Go read the whole article, I would like to hear your reactions.

5 comments:

  1. Well, I'm not sure what the alternative is. Left as-is the houses will probably attract squatters and meth-makers. They could offer them as homestead for free with maybe a few bucks to make it habitable, but then there's no jobs in Flint so that wouldn't really be sustainable. But, if you have a paid-off house you really wouldn't need much either.

    Tough call.

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  2. This reminded me of an article back a few months about Youngstown.
    http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/08/real_estate/radical_city_plan/index.htm

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  3. What a great link Margot.
    thank you for that and thanks fer stopping By!

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  4. The same thing happened in the 1930s. There isn't much that can be done at this point.

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  5. Anonymous4:23 AM

    42s advice sounds good to me. Someone else might as well get some use out of them, maybe posting a notice at some homeless shelters may gain some residents.

    Not that letting it go back to nature is a bad idea either - just taking bad and trying to make into good is all.

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