US Plans To Bulldoze 50 Shrinking Cities

chrb writes "Two days ago Slashdot discussed broke counties grinding their tarmac roads into gravel. Now the Telegraph reveals plans to raze huge sections of at least 50 US cities to the ground. The resulting smaller cities will be more economical to run, and the recovered land will be returned to nature."

Article mentions Baltimore

[langelgjm]

The article mentions Baltimore, which makes sense. If you've ever visited some of the, shall we say, less popular portions of that city, you'll find block after block of boarded-up rowhouses. It's actually kind of eerie. Hell, even if you take Amtrak and go past Charm City, you'll see lots of houses that are in dismal shape (but nevertheless, sadly, are still occupied).

Re:Nothing good can come of this...

[characterZer0]

Not per hundred, per hundred thousand.

Re:Urban Transit

[elrous0]

Yeah, I'm sure they'll thank you for moving them downtown to get harassed by bums, shot at by gangbangers, and attend a school where the teachers wear body armor. I can see them giving you the "World's Greatest Dad" cup now.

Re:Urban Transit

[doconnor]

Bums are mostly harmless, and the odds of you getting killed in a car crash in an auto-dependent suburb is far greater then being killed in a gang war.

Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX

[ArcherB]

You mean the ranch Bush bought a few years before he was elected to make him look like an authentic Texan even though he was mostly raised and schooled in Maine and Connecticut?

I think it was the whole Governor of Texas title that made him look like a real Texan. Before that, it was the 20 years he lived in Midland TX where he met his wife and raised his kids.

But, hey! Don't let that stop you from hating him. You seem to have such a good grasp of the facts.

Re:Seems like a good idea

[peragrin]

In Rochester,NY we have been doing this for years. Some 200-300 abandons homes are destroyed and then the empty lots are resold. Advantagesare less housing for homeless and drug shelters. On the bad side other than cleaning up bad buildings it doesn't help a lot, and someone still has to pay for it.

I really wish they had portable generator setup so you could do controlled burns and genrate electrcity from the heat produced.

Re:Seems like a good idea

[phantomfive]

It's a complete waste of effort. The economy grows because we produce things, not because we dig holes and fill them up.

At one time, everyone in society had to spend their effort on food/shelter production, basic maintenance. Then, as society progressed, farming techniques improved, it wasn't necessary for everyone to be a farmer. The people who didn't need to farm anymore started building more interesting things, like iPods, and books.

I like my iPod, I'm glad the developers at Apple weren't wasting their effort building things and then demolishing them. For society to progress, we need people to think of new things, not waste their time building things that don't matter. That is the catch.

Re:As long as we're targeting nukes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Sacramento! I dated a hot Chinese chick there.. I don't want her incinerated.

Re:Nothing good can come of this...

[YojimboJango]

From the article. They're buying up abandoned property. Because we're smart kids we know 'abandoned' means that no one lives there. Therefor no one will be relocated.

Also they're bulldozing the land and offering to sell it to neighbors for cheap on the outskirts of town, and restoring the properties near downtown, in an effort to get people to willingly move closer together.

In most cases that means that they're bulldozing the suburbs (property on the outskirts) and restoring the ghettos (inner city housing).

Re:Nothing good can come of this...

[Attila Dimedici]

They are talking about razing EMPTY buildings. They aren't talking about moving people anywhere. Both of the cities you mentioned (and I believe all of the others on the list) once had much larger populations. Philadelphia had a population of over 2 million. It now has a population of 1.4 million and shrinking. Detroit once had a population of 1.8 million. It now has a population of 900,000 and shrinking.
Eliminating much of the excess housing stock in these cities (as well as the abandoned factories/warehouses) should also help to reduce the crime rates.

Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the FACT that he did better in school than agore is lost on you.

Re:Detroit

[Ogive17]

They aren't going to build the production facilities in Sillicon Valley, costs are way too high. Maybe the company HQ will be there, but the MFG will probably stay in the mid-west where land is plentiful and cheap and the cost of living is much lower.

Re:As long as we're targeting nukes...

[Omestes]

And don't forget the main benefit of this, the small chance that Snake Pliskin might turn out to be real.

Re:Nothing good can come of this...

[nine-times]

Yeah, it's 45.7 per 100,000 people (i.e. 0.0457%).

Re:Nothing good can come of this...

[Anonymous Coward]

How this isn't considered "ethnically cleansing" cities is beyond me. It seems as if the only people who would be affected negatively would be minority groups.

Mod this idiotic post down. The links don't work... and the comments are just plain nonsense.

Re:Nothing good can come of this...

[AndersOSU]

It depends where you are. In places like SE MI you're bulldozing one type of ghetto and restoring another. Most of this housing is cheep single family homes that were built between 1940 and 1960 within the city limits, and close to a factory. Because of white flight and factory closings there are a lot of those areas that are almost completely empty.

You know that Lowes commercial about the house the GI bought after WWII? Those are the properties they're looking to raze.

They haven't heard of this in Flint / TFA is wrong

[grassy_knoll]

http://blog.mlive.com/flint-city-beat/2009/06/flint_takes_international_spot.html [mlive.com]

Kildee said this morning that there seems to be "a bit of hysteria about the whole scenario" and the Obama administration did not ask him to spread the word about the shrinking cities concept.

Which is direct contradiction of TFA [telegraph.co.uk]:

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.

Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Except he didn't. They were both mediocre, and they went to different schools. Gore had clearly better SATs, but neither of them had clearly better grades in college. Source: http://www.insidepolitics.org/heard/heard32300.html [insidepolitics.org]

Re:there's opportunity in this

[geekoid]

"as gas prices continue to rise, urban development plans will favor this model of development:"
No, people will pressure the market for electric cars.

"then the choice between sitting in your car in a traffic jam on the freeway at $4/ gallon gasoline in 105 degree phoenix won't look as nice as walking the charming old refurbished downtowns of historic cities."
until it's 105 below.

The burbs will always be here, and so will the automobile in some form. It would be stupid to not use that kind of transportation.
There is nothing wrong with the suburbs. There nice, relatively safe, quite and not as crowded as a city.

[Stupid]"mark my words: the 1950s trend of everyone moving west will be replaced in 2025 by stories of everyone out west moving to the midwest belt"[/Stupid]

Ok, they're marked.

Re:all i can do is laugh at your comment

[geekoid]

What?
he just said no onw will move to the mid-west, and the Oregon Pioneered what you are tlaking about.

Both correct.

Oregon is ALMOST as bad as Michigabn BECAUSE of the influx. Michigan is loosing people AND unemployment is rising.

Two different things.

"has the worst economic recovery prospects of any state in the union,"
False. In fact we have began some recovery and expect improvments. In fact, if people weren't coming here we would be recovering.
Oregon has industry, MI does not.
But hey, you hang out with the hicks in Flint and Flat Rock and STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM OREGON.

Re:Urban Transit

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget that it's a) inland and b) nearly total daylight for about 1/4 of the year. It's going to be mid-seventies there for the rest of the week.

Re:Urban Transit

[nausea_malvarma]

Not to mention, there are no sidewalks, and the roads have little shoulder. Perhaps early suburbs were more bike friendly. That was when they looked like this [rutgers.edu], but modern suburbs [wikimedia.org] are designed for cars. The houses are stretched farther apart, and the only thing connecting developments are 4 lane highways.

Re:As long as we're targeting nukes...

[Ironica]

The other downside is that the US Trade Deficit will get a whole lot bigger, since California's trade is at a huge surplus, and the rest of the country drags us down into the negative.

Me, I just want California to declare independence. If Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii want to come with us, ok by me, but it's not necessary.

Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX

[doom]

Don't confuse Cindy Sheehan for a liberal, she's just a crazy woman who also happened to be a rather upset mother.

Being a frequent listener to Democracy Now, I've actually heard Cindy Sheehan speak at length on different topics, and disagree with her if you like, but she doesn't deserve to be smeared as a "crazy woman": Should impeachment be off the table [democracynow.org]

I was particularly impressed with this response:

DAN GERSTEIN: But I think, Cindy--one thing we can definitely agree on is that Congress has been too timid in holding the Bush administration accountable. I don't think, though, that that justifies going to the compensatory extreme of an impeachment process. And to go to a point Ray raised about deterrence, which is an argument that you hear over repeatedly from the impeachment movement, I think, you know, what happened with President Johnson in Vietnam and then Richard Nixon and now George Bush, this idea that, you know, by just beginning impeachment proceedings against George Bush you're going to deter future presidents from engaging in similar actions, I think it is just unrealistic, because, you know, the Nixon case proves it. [...]

CINDY SHEEHAN: I think if Congress had impeached Ronald Reagan for Iran-Contra, we might have had a deterrent effect. I think that if we don't impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney, they've made a mockery of the Constitution, they've trampled on it. If we don't impeach them, take out the clauses or just--we'll just forget we have a Constitution and a representative republic.

Re:Better places in Ohio to run a bulldozer

[Knara]

I see no problem with eliminating parts of cities that house people I don't like. Granted, this would depopulate most cities entirely, but nonetheless.

Re:Urban Transit

[nine-times]

Yeah, where I grew up, "suburbs" were lots and lots of sold square miles of "developments" with winding roads that didn't necessarily connect, occasionally interrupted by highways and strip malls. No sidewalks at all. Sometimes there were shoulders, but usually not. Sometimes you could get places by cutting through people's back yards, but often people had fences anyway.

So like I said, I had a couple friends "in the neighborhood", by which I mean within my particular development, less than a mile away from me, where I could get to by riding my bike on only residential streets. Most people I knew and went to school with were at least 2 miles away (or so), which is still bike-riding distance, but it required riding in the middle of the street on a major road for at least part of the trip. There was not a park or public playground "in my neighborhood, so kids had to get a parent to drive them to one of those. Getting to the public pool required crossing at least a couple major roads. By the time we were teenagers, we could handle getting to a couple of the places that were within a couple miles, but even then we were "being bad"-- our parents would yell at us for riding our bikes on dangerous roads and cutting through people's yards.

The suburbs are no good for living, unless you assume that pretty much every person has their own car.

Re:Wouldn't say that

[Bigjeff5]

Ahh, thanks for that.

I didn't realize the "adult" thing to do was to close your eyes and put everything on credit.

I thought bad debt was how we got into this mess, but apparently we just weren't spending enough!!

I think from now on I'll start balancing my budget by getting more credit cards. I didn't realise spending less than my income was the immature way to manage finances.

Your insight has helped me out a ton, mortgage re-finance, here I come!

Re:Urban Transit

[Dark_Gravity]

Children don't do that anymore.. Their parents are too terrified they will be kidnapped. Sadly, I'm not joking.. its pretty damn sad. Check out www.Freerangekids.org for one lady fighting back against the "think of the children" fear.

www.Freerangekids.org had no website configured. Maybe http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com] is what you were thinking of.