Government considering bulldozing cities to forcibly downsize!
FLINT, Michigan - June 12, 2009 - Dozens of U.S. cities may have entire neighborhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the illegitimate Obama regime to tackle economic decline.
The government is looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint - one of the poorest U.S. cities - that 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, Kildee has now been approached by the U.S. government and a group of charities that want him to apply what he has learned to the rest of the country.
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 Amerika's northeast and midwest states. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.
In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the U.S. car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centers 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 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 program at the University of Kalifornia, Berkeley, said there was "both a cultural and political taboo" about admitting decline in Amerika.
"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 center, the once grand Durant Hotel - named after William Durant, GM's founder - is a symbol of the city's decline, said 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 Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained Amerikan 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 Amerikan thing. Across the U.S., 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 are simply too few people to pay for services, he said.
If the city doesn'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 for very little money.
They could then knock them down or sell them to owners who will occupy them. The city wants to specialize in health and education services, both areas that cannot easily be relocated abroad.
The local authority has restored the city's attractive but formerly deserted center but has pulled down 1,100 abandoned homes in outlying areas.
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 are already obvious, he said.
The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighborhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Kildee.
"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Amerikans considered his solution "defeatist" but he insisted it was "no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again".