There was an interesting piece in the New York Times last week talking about how civic leaders in Flint, Michigan are considering a radical plan to reinvigorate their city: they’re thinking of shrinking it. Flint used to be a gleaming mini-metroplois of 200,000, but with the decline of the auto industry (it is, after all, where Roger & Me was filmed) it is now down to 100,000 inhabitants or so.
Here’s the gyst of what’s being planned:
Instead of waiting for houses to become abandoned and then pulling them down, local leaders are talking about demolishing entire blocks and even whole neighborhoods.
The population would be condensed into a few viable areas. So would stores and services. A city built to manufacture cars would be returned in large measure to the forest primeval.
For your typical American city, this is a step-change in how they think about their future. Everyone has always assumed that something new will come along to reinvigorate their city – maybe a tech company or two, or something in the alternative energy or healthcare sphere. But sometimes (frequently) it doesn’t – and that’s a reality that Flint is coming to deal with (Of note – it’s not just Flint; only two of the 10 most populous cities in the U.S. in 1950 have a higher population today).
This weekend I was out in East New York (a part of Brooklyn) volunteering and couldn’t help but think that I’d seen this happen – in NYC. East New York used to be a veritable slum (now it’s just poor) and full of crackhouses. Those were torn down in the 1990s and replaced by urban farms and gardens. For instance, I was helping out at the East New York Farms: half an acre with more than 35 plants grown in 70 varieties. In the summer, they supply a local farmer’s market.
East New York has seen it’s Flint and survived. Interestingly enough, so too has Alphabet City. It too was full of slums and flophouses, which were torn down and turned into community gardens (now it’s a trendy hotbed of fancy restaurants and coffee shops). It’ll be interesting to see what Flint actually does – good luck to ’em.