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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."
White flight into the suburbs has brought us nothing but Wal-Mart and SUV's. I grew up in a suburb, and I hated how I was not able to go anywhere without a ride from my parents because everything was so far apart. Should I have children, I will not put them through that sort of social isolation.
The great depression brought us some awesome things in parks.
Maybe this one can lead to some awesome parks.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Detroit seems to be the wisest place to begin with. High crime, lost Stanley cup, agony of the car companies. Let Sillicon Valley become the new city for car makers. Li-Ion rules!
I think someone seriously underestimated the hazardous nature of building materials. R
azing a building containing asbestos or Ammonium bromide which a lot of older buildings contain (fireproofing) and just leaving it there is quite stupid!
Laugh, while they slowly kill you, America.
This is no joke. You are living in some post-apocalypse vision from J.G. Ballard, and yet you use this as an opportunity to jest. This is not the result of some lack or inability on the part of one community or another.
Rather it is the gradual outcome of steady, oligarchal corporate piracy and class war. Here's the kicker: That's the super-rich class, versus all others. You middle-class allies are no longer needed, now the looting is complete. You are now in the avenue of destruction - but they'll have you at each other's throats over false ideological dichotomies instead of turning on the real villains of history.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
A modest home in a lot of 7 abandoned (or un-sellable) homes is worth very little. But, if the home owners are willing to relocate, they could potentially own a similar home, closer to a "living" civilization, and bordering the nice new woods that has now been created out of all the empty districts. That home is worth a lot more.
It's obvious that the kind of home growth that we saw over the last ten years is not sustainable for any substantial amount of time. And it's a little ironic that many of the same construction companies that were thrown together to build the homes might transition into companies that are hired to tear down the very same homes... but, having said that, nothing makes me happier to think that we might rollback at least some of the ugly brown areas and return them to Nature.
Here I thought we were supposed to encourage people to move back into cities so high population densities would make mass transit more viable. Silly me.
Actually, if you read the article, I think you'll find that's exactly the idea (and not just making mass transit viable, also garbage collection, policing, etc). The idea is to compact the city that has become only sparsely populated due to everybody leaving, into one or more denser pockets. The problem, of course, is that some old geezer isn't going to want to move out of the old neighborhood and will end up being the only one in the middle of nowhere but still expect his mail to be delivered to his door.
No reason you can't save the historical sites while demolishing the rest of the neighborhood. If there's a significant building, build a park around it. It'll be in the middle of the wilderness, but that'll just make it all the more interesting.
I suspect people will be a lot more likely to pay attention to historic sites when they're not in the middle of a boarded-up section of town, and it might be better for the buildings in the long run, since they're less likely to be destroyed in a fire. (Wildfires would be a problem, admittedly.)
I don't think that historical preservation and getting rid of hazardous, blighted buildings are mutually exclusive. You just need to achieve some sort of balance. Not every old rowhouse is really "historic," and not every building needs to come down just because it's in a crappy neighborhood and has some peeling paint. A few significant buildings here and there can stay, and won't impact wildlife if they're managed correctly.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Huh? Relocate what people? The article mentions that much of this property is already empty/abandoned. Maintaining infrastructure to support large swaths of city that are relatively empty doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
One would think that people would not be fleeing "desirable" parts of town so I don't see any issue with the city "decommissioning" underutilized parcels of land and reallocating resources to areas where people actually want to live.
Surely, the squeaky clean politicians in that area don't have any plans to clue in their cronies to areas about to be decommissioned so that those folks can snap them up on the cheap and then sell them to the gummint at a profit? Nah...
Best,
The issue to me is that hyperinflation that occurred during the early and mid 200's, and the hyperdeflation we are now living with. During the inflatory period, everyone was taking fictional money out of their fictional property values to buy real goods. Banks made money, people got stuff, everyone was happy. The problem now is that, like it was with credit cards, people owe more than they possible can pay, and so the best thing to do is to walk away from the house. All this is covered by taxpayers. We can complain, but nothing can be done.
I think we just need to admit we have lived through 8 years of insanity, a national coke addiction, get over it, and move on. We don't need to pass blame, or punish people, just solve problems. If population is declining, and there are no jobs, and no people to live in the homes, then let's raze the land and return it to natural habitat. Hell, I say with a significant portion of a development is empty, pay the people to move, and raze the whole thing.
But we do have families without homes. Families who were priced out of home given the greed of the home investors at the expense of the home owners. It seems that since we have already bailed out the banks and the taxpayers have already in effect covered those mortgages, it seems that the FHA could help families move into the foreclosed homes. Right now the FHA does not want to deal with the average foreclosed home. Right now the FHA thinks that homeless is better than a imperfect home. That a leaky roof is worse than no roof at all. So it seems to me that there is a lot of housing available, and a lot of demand for cheap housing. When I say this the first time, and I saw the brookings institute, I saw it as a plot to maintain unsustainable property values rather than an way to help the country move forward.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Californian here! Can Sacramento go third?
Californian here! Can California go third?
There, fixed that for ya.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Part of the point of this is to raise population densities. Right now you have huge tracts of abandoned buildings, with people living here and there among them. It's a huge drain on public resources (providing police and, especially, fire protection to all the abandoned buildings), and doesn't really foster healthy communities.
Most of the plans that I've seen, including the one in Flint, involve buying up abandoned properties and demolishing them, while simultaneously restoring ones in better areas and encouraging people to move from blighted areas into them. The result is condensing the remaining residents of the city into a smaller, more densely-populated area. More public services in a smaller area, better public transportation, etc.
They're not trying to chase people out of the cities and into the suburbs or exurbs, quite the opposite. Most of the areas they're trying to get rid of were the original suburbs, and what they are trying to achieve is a rebuilding of the urban core.
Yeah, it would be great to get people to move in from the suburbs and fill in the high-density rowhousing in places like Baltimore, but that's just not going to happen. Nobody wants to live there, not given the way the areas are now. And those areas aren't going to get better. What's needed is a "rebooting" of cities -- get people back into the core areas, demolish some of the older urban/suburban transitional areas, and show that cities actually work. When people out in the 'burbs see that a city can be a nice place to live again, and not just a ghetto for people who have nowhere else to go, then it'll be time for new construction. (But this time, build mixed-use and actually plan the growth, rather than just letting stuff grow and create huge tracts of transportation-dependent, single-use housing, miles away from commercial or industrial areas.)
This is the first step towards making cities desirable again.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Hint: "out west" consists of more than California. I envision exactly nobody leaving the Pacific Northwest for anything in the midwest.
Oh, by the way: Portland (and Oregon at-large) pretty much pioneered the urban planning and growth boundary system that you are cheerleading with your car-hate and enviro-spew in the 1970s.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
You just said only minority groups live in poor neighborhoods. That's racism if I've ever heard it.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Take a look at http://www.worldwithoutus.com/index2.html. Houses decay if they are not maintained. They decay rather rapidly. Unless ownership can be conveyed in some fashion to attentive stewards, a house will come down one way or another. Far better to plan the inevitable downsizing than to pretend it isn't going to happen.
All engineering should consider the full lifecycle. These houses were built in more optimistic times, but was it thought they would stand forever? The only real difference between sustainable technologies and cancerous growth is that the plan for obsolescence includes the needs of the many, not just the wants of the few.
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
What profit has a man from all his labor
In which he toils under the sun?
while i read your post and the one you are responding to
zzz
maybe he is modded off topic because he is more concerned with grudges and overarching indictments and acid-laced blame than anything useful
people who are consumed by pointing fingers and little more are yet a further symptom of any societal blight you or the post you are responding to describes
the way out of any problem in this world is positive, optimistic ideas and attitudes, regardless of what got you there
not useless, pointless doom and gloom
and so he is off-topic, and correctly modded as such: his post has more to do with acting out his psychological damage than anything anyone else wants to read or might find useful
maybe he has good reason to be bitter. maybe his indictments are valid. but he needs to reach a point where the words that come out of his mouth are constructive, before anything he says is of any value to anyone else
until then: -1, off-topic. the correct mod
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While I can see the merit of this from the perspective of the city having to deal with the upkeep of such lands, my mind keeps coming back to the idea that this is more a move to increase, or bolster, declining property values by simply adjusting supply in regards to demand.
Is this a move on the part of the "haves" trying to maintain the value of property that they will be selling/renting to the "have-nots"?
Despite the common-sense this proposal appears to be based on, I cannot seem to shake the feeling that this may not be in the best interests of those most hurt by the current recession. Sure, maybe this will free up tax dollars for more important programs, but will it drive up rent prices and nullify any savings for the low-income familys? Will those freed-up tax dollars simply be spent on rent subsidies?
The one good thing in all this, something I have no doubt about, is the return to nature. Now, THAT is something I have a hard time finding fault with.
All in all, maybe we should give it a little more time to examine the long-term results of this plan before throwing the rest of the country into 'dozer mode.
You act as though any self respecting person needs any additional reasons to hate the worst president to ever be inflicted upon the country.
Even though Obama is taking the country downhill faster than Carter, that's no reason to hate him - instead just gently remind him and the Democrats the reason people voted for them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
This is a good point and a valid concern, but it depends a bit on the areas they're getting rid of. There may be large areas that are essentially empty anyway, and maybe lots of those buildings are in bad shape (and maybe should even be condemned). I'm not too familiar with the cities in question, but the scenario doesn't seem completely impossible.
Also, for anyone who is displaced, they could choose to offer some other kinds of options for relocation, which wouldn't necessarily drive people out of the city. Maybe they could offer some alternative low-incoming housing for people who can't afford to simply move?
Anyway, it generally sounds like a good idea to me. For economic, environmental, and even social/cultural/health reasons, I think that our country would be well served by aiming to increase population density in specific areas (i.e. move people in cities into more compact cities, move people in suburbs into cities, even moving farming closer to cities, and leave more of the country open to nature).
In larger population densities, you can more easily (economically) provide better services to more people. Assuming things are done right, Infrastructure becomes cheaper to build and maintain. Having people live in cities is generally much more energy efficient per-person. Ignoring air pollution issues, people who live in cities are often thinner and healthier.
There are trade-offs, yes, but I think the suburbs sort of need to die. People don't realize that they're a relatively recent invention (suburbs arguably didn't exist until about half a century ago), and I think it's a social experiment which has failed.
Posting AC so my karma doesn't take the hit for this.
As to the GP, hell yeah. I have a 1 1/2 year old toddler and I can't wait to get the hell out of the city and live among those "like me".
I have a nephew who goes to the local school system. Guards with pepper spray in the lunchroom to break up the nearly daily fights the black kids get into. Metal scanners at the doors. People doing drugs on the steps before class. No supervision, no money, no nothing. The teachers have given up years ago. Nobody gets an education there. Just drugs and violence and apathy.
Fuck that.
My parents moved out of the exact same city I'm in and into the suburbs when I was a toddler for the same reasons. And my college degree, good job and already paid off house are strong evidence that they did the right thing for their son. And I intend to do the same thing for mine.
There's politically correct, then there's taking a melon baller and gouging out your eyeballs trying not to see certain things. Come live in the city a while. You wouldn't want your kid growing up to be one of these no-future degenerates, I promise you.
Huh? Relocate what people? The article mentions that much of this property is already empty/abandoned.
Won't somebody think of the squatters?!
The enemies of Democracy are
You wouldn't get any business. The Israelis have already demonstrated mastery in demolition of low cost housing in depressed areas. In fact, they should compete for the demolition contract. With their Apache attack helicopters and Merkava tanks, they'd probably have reduced the less savory areas of Detroit to rubble before you can say "Gaza Strip".
A lot of cities were hit by middle and upper class people leaving the city and going to the suburbs but I think Baltimore may have been hit even worse than most. Why live in Baltimore when you can live in Columbia and have access to the jobs of Washington DC as well as Baltimore? When people leave they take their tax base with them. The drop in taxes cause drops in services such as schools and police -- this forces even more people to leave. Wash rinse repeat and soon you have a city that once had a population of 1 million but now has a population closer to 500,000. You also have a school system and police force that can barely keep up (and often can't keep up at all) with a poorer and poorer population that needs the services even more. Maryland has one of the highest median house hold incomes of any state in the union but Baltimore hardly gets enough money to try and keep the city going. So Baltimore has these problems but I don't think you can say that Maryland is part of the rust belt. Baltimore does have a handful of trendy neighborhoods that middle class people do want to live in, but sadly those neighborhoods are the exception. I guess if you bulldoze those houses that aren't used anymore you would increase the value of the houses that are still standing. I guess a large number of parks that people might be able to enjoy would be better than vast number of boarded-up houses we have now.
M'Lord, I believe the common folk refer to that as "statistics".
Racism is ignoring such glaringly obvious disparities so you don't have to do anything about them or investigate what caused them.
You do realize that its more efficient to demolish an old building that is costing you money to maintain than to pay for it year after year after year? That's what we're talking about, not digging holes and then filling them up. This is the part of maintenance that most people don't think about, the 'throwing away' part. While I hate the green movement in many ways I can't but respect them for forcing people to acknowledge that waste management is an integral part of modern society, a part you seem to be forgetting.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
Wow, negative one, troll.... cool!
Just think, you could've wasted that on a real troll rather than someone you disagreed with politically. Rock on, Mr. Mod.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Your responses to the OP are truly bizarre and, frankly, creepy. How do you put a happy face on his analysis which, in my opinion, is largely correct? *Why* would you want to put a happy face on it?
In the corporate context, a "positive mental attitude" is a convenient tool of denial that keeps you engaged toward a goal regardless of your circumstances. This seems to be your mindset.
In the real world, sometimes you're better off recognizing an unpleasant reality for what it is. Tarting it up with feel-good slogans and rank falseness may make it more palatable to genteel sensibilities, but it's counterproductive and does nothing to prevent the same mistakes in the future.
free software, open standards, open file formats, no software patents.
He used the word "only." That's not just racism to minorities, it further marginalizes poor whites.
Growing up a poor white kid in Appalachia is worse than a poor black kid in the city. Not only do you have all the disadvantages of being poor, but also: nobody gives a shit about you.
I'm sick of you racists thinking you can get away with it because its PC to be a racist toward certain groups.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Speaking of Talking Heads..
Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it's nothing but flowers
There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
you got it, you got it
We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
we got it, we got it
There was a shopping mall
Now it's all covered with flowers
you've got it, you've got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
you've got it, you've got it
Years ago
I was an angry young man
I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong
Once there were parking lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it
This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
you got it, you got it
I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
you got it, you got it
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
you got it, you got it
I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
you got it, you got it
We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
you got it, you got it
This was a discount store,
Now it's turned into a cornfield
you got it, you got it
Don't leave me stranded here
I can't get used to this lifestyle
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Yes there are parts of any sprawling American city which would be better off if torn down and rebuilt. This sounds too much like yet another bailout (as if $13.9 trillion tax dollars thrown into banks ^H^H^H^ black holes wasn't enough.) This is simply a plan to reduce property supply, prop up property prices and therefore bail out banks and property developers (generally wealthier with more $olitical influen$e than tenants and mortgage holders.) It is exactly like the government destruction of fruit during the Great Depression in order to prop up cannerys and megafarms:
"...And the failure hands over the State like a great sorrow. The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit--and kerosene spayed over the golden mountains." - From "The Grapes of Wrath", John Steinbeck 1939
I hope this isn't a ploy to force people back into the democrat-run downtowns where there is no commerce, rampant crime, and crappy schools. They've run themselves into the ground and need all that tax income back before they go bankrupt.
The city I live in keeps raising taxes on me while the high school graduation rate is less than 40% and unemployment and foreclosures are booming. Meanwhile, the suburbs of the same town have an 85%+ graduation rate, almost no crime, and great schools. Why the hell should I want to stick around to pay more taxes while they cut funding for police and my home value declines?
This could get ugly if people don't go along quietly.
Define 'better' before this continues. Now it can't be SAT scores since Gore did got about 100 points more. So was it just raw grades from college you're counting? Because they went to different universities and majored in different topics. It'd sure make things easier if those were comparable figures, but if they were I know our chemical engineers here would look like complete dumbasses compared to our psych and business majors.
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
It's seems like a win win, California will be gone, we would have reduced our nuclear stockpile in the process,
Yes, but the big lose is that California pays most of the bills. You'd have to start carrying your own weight when they weren't around to make your welfare payments, and you know you aren't willing to do that or you wouldn't be leeching off of them in the first place.
I normally wouldn't speak up in such conversations, but From personal experience I have some advice to offer. Do not try to argue who is a Texan with a Texan. I do not mean to bash an entire state, but when it comes to the issue of statehood there is no logic. They can be very rational on any other topic, but there is something about Texan-ness that is a giant blind spot.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I imagine it quickly converts to tent-city with no sanitation or trash pickup.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
There is an abandoned city in the US that is protected and is in fact being used in the Darpa robotic vehicle testing, its old army housing.
There are also a number of ghost towns in the US that one could study.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
It's an incredibly racist proposal, whether you realized it or not.
It's not simply picking places full of residents you don't like and/or are scared of.
Oh for fuck's sake. I only know the part I drive through. It's a lot of abandoned factories on/near the lake. It reminds me of the abandoned industrial area they shot the last part of Robocop in. It's an abandoned graffiti magnet. I wasn't suggesting leveling the suburbs. The east side of Cleveland proper though - nobody would miss it. It would make a lovely park.
And BTW, there is nothing more annoying than being accused of racism when it's not warranted. Not everyone evaluates every single fucking thing they say for their impact on whatever ethnic group anyone might personally have a bug up their ass about. Part of the trouble in this country is that people feel they have a right to never be offended, so they're constantly on the lookout for things that do. Strangely enough, these people perpetuate the racism they loudly claim to despise by constantly making it an issue. Let me tell you something about racism. It's boring. And the people who keep bringing it up are crashing bores as well.
You're one of these people.
So if I've offended you, please let me state this in the strongest possible way: Get bent.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Relocating population from sparsely populated area into that of a smaller area does allow the government to more easily monitor and control the said population as there are now substantially smaller area to cover.
You're absolutely right about that; it's a lot cheaper to provide effective law enforcement to a denser population. Same goes for fire stations, schools, sewer maintenance, water and power...
It doesn't have to be evil just because the government is doing it.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I lived through the ineffectiveness of Carter and the criminal actions of Reagan and Nixon so I know they are out of the running. As for the others, the damage they caused was nothing compared to the damage this country has suffered and is suffering due to Bush.
Their immigration laws (in the Texan mind, not in reality) are stricter than any in the universe.
It is probably hard to understand for someone who is not from Texas or has been there quite a lot, but apparently anybody can be a "texan" but nobody can _really_ be a Texan unless you were born there or you invented something really god dang impressive while you where in the state of Texas.
So just forget arguing the point, let it go, go do something else.
Right before he added trillions to the national debt, sank the country into an extended and unpopular war in the middle east, ignored intelligence that warned of an attack of the World Trade Center via airplanes, wiretapped Americans illegally, and complacently watched the destruction of a major American city, apparently.
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo