The shrinking of Detroit is continuing apace.
Mayor's solution to his city's cancer: Bulldoze it
Mayor's solution to his city's cancer: Bulldoze it
Mayor's solution to his city's cancer: Bulldoze it
'This city is going to go down' if it doesn't eliminate neighbourhoods that are practically devoid of people, he says
By Alex Spillius, Daily Telegraph May 29, 2010
Tired of Detroit's status as the symbol of everything wrong with urban America, its new mayor has come up with a radical solution: to bulldoze the city.
David Bing, a businessman and former basketball player, said he had no choice.
The 2010 census is expected to record a population of about 800,000, down from 1.8-million in the Motor City heyday of the late 1950s.
The long decline of the car industry and all its spinoff businesses has been exacerbated by the collapse of the housing market. Prices are close to what they were 50 years ago, when magazines featured Detroit as the most desirable city in America.
Decent three-bedroom homes can be bought for $10,000, but no one wants to buy.
With the city facing a deficit of as much as $124 million this year, Bing said the only solution was to reduce the size.
"There is just too much land and too many expenses," he said. "If we don't do it, this city is going to go down."
Plans being devised would be the most revolutionary carried out by an American city.
Large chunks of neighbourhoods would be razed and converted to parks and urban farms -- or abandoned.
Bing has vowed to demolish 3,000 homes this year and a further 7,000 over the following three years. As many as 40,000 homes could eventually go.
The plans are being watched by influential figures who believe other cities -including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis -could follow suit. In Detroit's Brightmoor neighbourhood on the city's northwest side, the mayor's logic is obvious. On many blocks, only two or three homes are inhabited, the rest have been vacated or burned down.
They attract rodents and drug gangs.
Monique McLean, 29, of Brightmoor, said she would welcome the chance to move.
"It is terrible here," she said. "I don't feel safe at night. People
have moved and soon there will be no one left. I would be glad to get out of here. I would be glad to get out of Detroit, period."
At one end of the street is an abandoned car, and at the other a home gutted by fire.
On a nearby street, every shop on a half-mile stretch is shuttered. Even the pawnshop has closed down.
Saving Detroit will be a mammoth effort. Almost a third of the city's 224 square kilometres is vacant or derelict. Charles Pugh, president of the city council, said that by reducing the area the city served, millions of dollars would be saved.
"We have to police property, put out fires, light the streets, pump water and shovel snow for all these sparsely populated areas," said Pugh. "It's really inefficient."
John George, of the city's northwest side, has been campaigning to improve neighbourhoods for 21 years.
Through his non-profit group Motor City Blight Busters, George has founded a community centre near Brightmoor, financed a city garden, an art gallery, a restaurant and will soon open a jazz cafe.
In the 1990s, the group refurbished homes; now it demolishes them.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
'This city is going to go down' if it doesn't eliminate neighbourhoods that are practically devoid of people, he says
By Alex Spillius, Daily Telegraph May 29, 2010
Tired of Detroit's status as the symbol of everything wrong with urban America, its new mayor has come up with a radical solution: to bulldoze the city.
David Bing, a businessman and former basketball player, said he had no choice.
The 2010 census is expected to record a population of about 800,000, down from 1.8-million in the Motor City heyday of the late 1950s.
The long decline of the car industry and all its spinoff businesses has been exacerbated by the collapse of the housing market. Prices are close to what they were 50 years ago, when magazines featured Detroit as the most desirable city in America.
Decent three-bedroom homes can be bought for $10,000, but no one wants to buy.
With the city facing a deficit of as much as $124 million this year, Bing said the only solution was to reduce the size.
"There is just too much land and too many expenses," he said. "If we don't do it, this city is going to go down."
Plans being devised would be the most revolutionary carried out by an American city.
Large chunks of neighbourhoods would be razed and converted to parks and urban farms -- or abandoned.
Bing has vowed to demolish 3,000 homes this year and a further 7,000 over the following three years. As many as 40,000 homes could eventually go.
The plans are being watched by influential figures who believe other cities -including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis -could follow suit. In Detroit's Brightmoor neighbourhood on the city's northwest side, the mayor's logic is obvious. On many blocks, only two or three homes are inhabited, the rest have been vacated or burned down.
They attract rodents and drug gangs.
Monique McLean, 29, of Brightmoor, said she would welcome the chance to move.
"It is terrible here," she said. "I don't feel safe at night. People
have moved and soon there will be no one left. I would be glad to get out of here. I would be glad to get out of Detroit, period."
At one end of the street is an abandoned car, and at the other a home gutted by fire.
On a nearby street, every shop on a half-mile stretch is shuttered. Even the pawnshop has closed down.
Saving Detroit will be a mammoth effort. Almost a third of the city's 224 square kilometres is vacant or derelict. Charles Pugh, president of the city council, said that by reducing the area the city served, millions of dollars would be saved.
"We have to police property, put out fires, light the streets, pump water and shovel snow for all these sparsely populated areas," said Pugh. "It's really inefficient."
John George, of the city's northwest side, has been campaigning to improve neighbourhoods for 21 years.
Through his non-profit group Motor City Blight Busters, George has founded a community centre near Brightmoor, financed a city garden, an art gallery, a restaurant and will soon open a jazz cafe.
In the 1990s, the group refurbished homes; now it demolishes them.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
