No one can refute the fact that president Obama thinks in big terms.
The following story comes from the Telegraph in the U.K.
While the proposal calls for the government taking and bulldozing abandoned buildings in major UC Cities such as Flint, MI, there is nothing to prevent the government from using their police powers and taking of adjacent private property that may be against the wishes of the property owners.
To avoid being accused of “spin” I am posting the entire article and have included the UK Telegraph story link at the end of this post to confirm the exact text. Larry G
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 US government is 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.
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”.
Larry Gilbert, OC Co-Director, Californians United for Redevelopment Education.
Member, Board of Directors, California Alliance to Protect Private Property Rights
In many of the manufacturing cites back east where we used to make things, there are many areas of the city where you will see nothing but boarded up houses.
In some cities they have a program where you can buy vacant houses for a little as $ 1.00 as long as you agree to fix them up. Even this in many cases is not working, the homes are too old and to far gone to even be worth buying for a dollar.
A program to knock then down and return the land to nature is certainlly better than letting them continue to deterorate and making these areas even more unattactive and dangerous.
I am not a supporter of Redevelopment, especally the way it is done here in California. But under the circumstances in places like FLint and other former rust belt cites, it may be the only way to begin to make thes places attractive at some future point.
Larry,
Did you ever see Michael Moore’s movie, “Roger and Me”? Flint is hometown to MM. In fact, MM calls Dan Kildee his friend.
This razing of parts of Flint will bring the entire boom-bust cycle, full circle.
jim.
while I agree that some of these cities have been devastated by the decline of the big 3 in the midwest, I would prefer that the president would conduct a series of Town Hall meetings where all sides can weigh into the discussion.
What I do not wish to learn is that the plan is to eventually create a complex of huge housing projects like those I saw when growing up in Newark NJ or Supreme Court Justice candidate Sotomayor experienced in the Bronx.
We know that the long term plan of government is to get us out of our cars and into mass transit.
Yes, a lot of discussions are going on. I agree huge complex hosing projects are a bad thing and many of those that were built have come down over the years because they contributed to the inner city decay. Hopefully everyone regardless of thier political leaning has learned these do not work.
Mass transit is only really good in dense population areas. But we do have to find alternate transportation options to gasoline/oil based transportation. As Brazil has discovered does not have to be the end of the car, but just different types of engineering.
I expect at some future time not that far off that most people will not be able to afford the gas to run thier current cars, I for one, would like to have another alternative other than a bus or train.
Jim,
Our government makes no secret about their long term plans to wipe out the burbs with our cul d sac streets and single family homes, with two car garages, away from the inner cities.
If you follow legislation in CA let me suggest your checking out AB 32 where we are being herded into mixed-use, transit oriented development, TOD, with a focus on future land use.
TOD being “a method of regulationg land use that concentrates commercial and residential growth around transit centers in order to maximize access to transit and encourage the use of non-motorized transportation.” These will be walkable communities with an emphasis on green buildings.
In fact local city governments are concerned that this legislation will undermine their land use concept approvals.
Yes, very true in California. Here we live in highly dense areas compared with every other part of the country. Some of these ideas may work in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, but in less consentrated urban areas, like most of orange county and 99% of the rest of the country, they simply will not.
If Ab32 is for making this a statewide project and if it is not targeted for already densely populated areas then it is a waste of time and money.
Nobody, who lives in New York City at least in the downtown areas, really uses a car. Only to go out of town. Even people who work there, often take public transport because it is faster and more cost effective than driving.
Now doing a New York style transport system may work in other dense areas. But not in sparcely populated rual areas.
I agree with many of your conserns, but think we have to consider all alternatives based on the needs of the local area. A one size fits all solution of any kind simply will not work and these are often what we get when we think our way is the only one that will work.
While there are those who question the calibre of stories posted on the Orange Juice blog I was pleased to just hear el Rushbo, AKA RUSH Limbaugh, discussing his concern about the same proposal as appearing above.
While I got the info from a UK newspaper the bottom line is that we collectively try to keep you the readers informed on a wide spectrum of stories.