Bulldozing America

Hopefully Flint, Michigan will be the future of American urban planning. Flint epitomizes rustbelt decay: it was the former home to GM and has shrunk to half its former size since the 1970s. Most recently, it has been demolishing itself, as the city buys up empty or blighted properties on the cheap and resells them or tears them down to create parkland. From the Telegraph (UK) article:

Local politicians believe [Flint] must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

...

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.

While Flint, like its fellow decaying rust-belt towns, is "pruning" itself due to a loss of heavy industry (to the Sunbelt and then to Asia) rather than a shortage of gasoline, we can expect more Flints as the automobile continues its decline. America has over-sprawled. As the car culture runs out of gas, further-flung suburbs will become unsustainable. People will be unable to live in places without easily-accessible shops, schools, and workplaces and efficient public transportation. And the suburbs that don't work will have to be reengineered or bulldozed.

In this context, it's an extremely good thing that the Obama administration is taking the Flint plan national:

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.

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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.

With luck, we may see Flint come to California before too much longer.

In other news: Back in New Zealand.