Slashdot Mirror
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."
Can DC be first?
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
The article mentions Baltimore, which makes sense. If you've ever visited some of the, shall we say, less popular portions of that city, you'll find block after block of boarded-up rowhouses. It's actually kind of eerie. Hell, even if you take Amtrak and go past Charm City, you'll see lots of houses that are in dismal shape (but nevertheless, sadly, are still occupied).
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
We wall these areas off and turn them into Escape from New York style maximum security prisons. As long as we don't fly Air Force One over that airspace we should be OK. Kurt Russell is getting a bit too old to keep helping us out with that sort of thing.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
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.
Unfortunately Dayton, OH should be on that list. Just lost NCR.. you know it's bad when a company that was founded in your city over 100 years ago packs up shop without even giving the host city/state a chance to appease them.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
This seems like a win-win scenario. Construction companies get hired to demolish the old buildings, which stimulates the economy and if the right buildings get the axe, old run down buildings full of lead paint and asbestos insulation go away and are replaced with meadows, forests or new greener buildings. The catch would be all the geezers coming out of the wood-work to save all the "historical sites"
Hearing this makes me think of Detroit. Its population is constantly shrinking and much of the city is in disrepair. I've ridden greyhound busses through it a few times and you pass mile after mile of boarded up, dilapidated buildings.
It makes one wonder what the city would be like if it ended up being completely abandoned, sort of like Rome after the fall of the empire.
Most likely there would be a half-attempted cleanup effort, but it would probably fail. Demolishing buildings isn't cheap. Returning the land to it's natural state is even more expensive, not to mention nature would probably do it herself over a slightly longer time frame.
This reminds me of the "urban renewal" projects of the 50s and early 60s, when huge sections actually were razed in various major cities. Boston's West End was a victim of this.
It's widely considered to be one of the stupidest projects the government's ever done.
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.
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
Rent them out to Israeli army for training purposes.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
"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."
Ya know they's in barney when the dustcarts dont' e'en have any rubbish to pick up!
Detroit (Homicide rate of 47.5%
Wow! With that homicide rate, we don't even have to worry about razing the city, there'll be practically no one left in a few years anyway.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
You needn't worry, citizen. OCP has assured the public that a relocation plan is already in place for all residents displaced by Delta City.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Both of which also have large ghetto type areas which house hundreds of people who I'm sure that most of us here wouldn't want living in our backyards.
Truth be told, I really don't want *anyone* living in my backyard.
FTFA:
"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
take older rust belt cities and remove the suburban sprawl surrounding them and prune them down to their urban core, and then you have a city layout from the days before the rise of the automobile
as gas prices continue to rise, urban development plans will favor this model of development: tightly clustered cities with good public transportation, surrounded by parkland. a much more humane and livable environment. places like phoenix and las vegas and houston, nothing more than giant sprawling suburbs really, will become inhospitable to affordable living while rust belt cities will develop a new cachet as nice places to live: condos and coops in refurbished historical buildings surrounded by healthy woodlands, with easy public transport or foot traffic to anywhere you want to and need to go
of course this cachet of "nice place to live" also has to imply some sort of job growth too, but as these rust belt cities shrink, they have ample opportunity to invest in emerging job sectors to bolster that sort of growth
then the choice between sitting in your car in a traffic jam on the freeway at $4/ gallon gasoline in 105 degree phoenix won't look as nice as walking the charming old refurbished downtowns of historic cities. these old cities have good bones, they just need to be pruned and invested a little in, and natural growth will take hold again
notice one city not mentioned as ripe for bulldozing: pittsburgh. yet pittsburgh is pretty much a poster child of a rust belt city. why? good planning for investing in future job sectors:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_612352.html
now compare pittsburgh's sober but cheerful outlook to the armageddeon-level job losses at work in the newer suburban sprawl cities that relied too much on overheated sectors like construction
detroit and flint and any other city heavily dependent on automobile manufacturing, alas, has a different story than pittsburgh. but this part of the larger picture at play here: the death of the automobile, the death of suburban sprawl, the return to small compact cities with a livable core surrounded by healthy woodland and with good public transportation
i for one welcome the death of the age of the automobile and the idiotic environmental damage of gas guzzling automobiles and space wasting burbs, and the inhumane anonymity of living in the isolating mcmansions and sitting in traffic jams, in areas of the country no one can survive in without artificial air conditioning
death to california
long live ohio
mark my words: the 1950s trend of everyone moving west will be replaced in 2025 by stories of everyone out west moving to the midwest belt
for the same reason: better quality of life
mark my words
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Feral crackheads will swing from tree to tree like Tarzan, battling beast and man alike for dominion over the urban green spaces.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
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,
You mean the ranch Bush bought a few years before he was elected to make him look like an authentic Texan even though he was mostly raised and schooled in Maine and Connecticut?
I think it was the whole Governor of Texas title that made him look like a real Texan. Before that, it was the 20 years he lived in Midland TX where he met his wife and raised his kids.
But, hey! Don't let that stop you from hating him. You seem to have such a good grasp of the facts.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
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.
This is understandably a touchy subject for a lot of people. It's hard to overstate the sense of loss; more than that, the sense of historical obliteration. Neighborhoods where once happy, prosperous people lived productive lives are vacant, and one cannot help but feel that those happy, prosperous people are gone, perhaps never to return, and those empty houses stand like tombstones marking the death of their dreams.
Of course, this is thankfully not really true - those happy and productive people simply moved to other places, where they continue to live out their happy, productive lives. We feel bad about razing these homes because we feel like we are razing the lives of the people that used to occupy them. But those people left those homes behind long ago. They've moved on - so should the rest of us.
We feel sick about obliterating what should be valuable assets. This is a hard problem too. laborers built these structures, many of them good strong structures, some of them the likes of which will not be seen again. With care, they should be able to last centuries. But a society too obsessed with preserving the past - particularly a past that is not valued - is a moribund society. We should not carelessly annihilate our history. But at the same time we need to remember who we, historically, are:
We are a dynamic society. We are a dynamic people. The only constant is change. These cities shrank while other cities grew. It is in many ways a reflection on the freedom of our society, that people and businesses decided to leave and go elsewhere. Other places gained while these places lost. Now it's time for the principle of creative destruction to come into play. It's time to give up on what people have freely decided they don't value. It's time to re-allocate resources from failure to profit. It's time to clear the landscape of the ruins of yesterday, to make room for the possibilities of the future.
The ideas in this article are on the right track. We can't get sentimental about a past that is gone, never to return. Raze the unowned buildings, now sheltering criminals and vagrants. Hell, de-annex the empty land and return it to the township. Sell whatever mobile capital goods are underutilized. Wipe the ordinance book clean and start over again. Put every budget item and every tax on the chopping block. Clear the path for future opportunity, or it will never arrive.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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?
"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves that make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them that we are missing."
--Gamel Abdel Nasser
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
It would be very interesting to close off part of a disused city or even a whole city and leave it as it is to see how nature would take over without human influences. Would it decay as some predict?. Would nature take over tower blocks for high rise living? ... The nearest experiment we have is Chernobyl, but thats nothing like American conditions such as weather etc.. and a 2nd city to compare how nature adapts to part or even a whole city without humans around would be fascinating.
Also part of a disused city would be a very valuable and useful proving ground for advanced research in robotics, such as cars using the road networks and urban exploring robots. Its a once in a life time chance to gain unrestricted access to a big part of a city.
Another very good use would be to leave part of a disused city as a film set of a slowly decaying abandoned city. (The WW2 Blitz in London created a lot of disused buildings that appeared in many films for decades). Part of a city would be an incredible once in a lifetime opportunity to create a huge film set that doesn't disrupting and interrupt normal working cities and its cheaper and easier for film companies to use. So its win win for these companies helping the US film industry and other businesses in cities otherwise inconvenienced by filming. The film companies must be able to see the potential. It would be such a good help to the US film industry for many years to come. They could even set up a joint company to manage the disused part of a city for the film industry and lease parts out to film companies world wide.
No. This is the result of deindustrialization of the West. As our economy becomes increasingly information-based and decreasingly manufacturing-based, old manufacturing centers are crumbling. But a new economy is rising, one based on information and information technology.
The RIAA/MPAA fiascos and the rise of iTunes and P2P, the failing auto industry, and the current economic disaster are all results of the growing pains associated with this transformation.
Anybody who doesn't realize it at this point should re-open Heidi and Alvin Toeffler's books, because they provided the roadmap years ago. The fact that is happening now is not a surprise to me at all.
My blog
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.
I live in an area that would be directly impacted by this type of plan. I own an old home in the North Side of Pittsburgh and I am in absolute support of this. 1/2 of the houses on my street are abandoned and boarded up. If the City were to come in and demolish them (which they have slowly started to do) it would not only increase the safety of the area. It would also raise the property values which would in turn increase tax income to the City.
The problem we're faced with is no new development will happen in parts of the area until we purge the beyond repair buildings. Why would any erect a new structure next to a building that can barely stand?
I certainly think this idea is better then doing what we've been doing for 30+ years. Letting the urban core of Pittsburgh slowly rot while the young professionals continue to avoid the City for the suburbs. City living in Pittsburgh is on it's way back in areas that are in better shape, demolishing the buildings that are not salvageable will only accelerate this renewal!
Yeah, it's 45.7 per 100,000 people (i.e. 0.0457%).
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.
Yeah, but what happens if instead, everything east of the San Andreas fault sinks into the Atlantic ocean?
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
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
Although, I'll bet its on a number of people's to-do lists.
There might be a problem with that new economy: it probably won't create enough jobs/wealth for hundreds of millions of people, like the industrial economy did. In the worst case the information economies won't be able to pay enough goods from the manufacturing economies.
Incidentally, your sig points to the root of the problem.
The problem is, the trade economy is built on the premise of a manufacturing economy. Unfortunately, our existing trade economy cannot efficiently allocate resources in an information economy.
Hunter-gatherers "worked" an average of 10-20 hours a week to maintain themselves. It was the introduction of agriculture that put us in the mode of working all the time; it also meant our population could burgeon out of control, and we could (several thousand years later) start building an industrial base. But the 40-hour-work-week is an artifact of a particular system that some societies have already outgrown. In places where health care isn't tied to "full-time" employment, there's already growing trends toward job-sharing, the four-thirds solution, and shorter work weeks.
Bottom line: we no longer need as much labor put in to meet our needs, so we need to stop withholding needed goods and services based on how much labor one puts in. There's enough for everyone. Let's be nice about it.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
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.
Snake Pliskin? I heard he was dead.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
It was the introduction of agriculture that put us in the mode of working all the time
This is really not quite true. I'm very familiar with farm operations, and I can assure you that farmers do not work all the time. There are a couple times of year when you really need to make sure all the field operations get completed in a very short window: e.g. planting and harvesting. Some of the other things can be done in a bigger window: e.g. tilling & spraying. Prior to those times of year you spend your days servicing and rechecking your equipment 3-4 times because the cost of a downed tractor or combine can be enormous. The rest of the year, you could take a part time job or simply do nothing.
Livestock care is a different story, since they pretty much require constant care, but most farmers these days don't handle livestock the way they did 50 years ago when people ran integrated farms.
If we're to step back a few hundred years ago, it was not at all uncommon for serfs and laborers to only work 10 hours a week during offseason. There are plentiful stories of peasants sleeping all winter to conserve calories. They would basically shack up as a family in bed together to conserve heat and minimize the food they required.
The real transition to clocked in time was with the introduction of factories (capital). When a significant portion of the value of a product is derived from the value of the capital, then it makes sense to keep the capital operating as often as possible. You couldn't afford to have the line stop because a worker came in late.
Even then, the 40 hour work week is a relatively recent invention, having only come about in the 1930's through 1950's due to labor organization.
Manufacturing productivity has gone up drastically in the last century, whereas service productivity has not (as much). It still takes as many manhours to get a hair cut today as it did 100 years ago. The scissors used to cut your hair probably take 1/50th the amount of labor they did 100 years ago. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise then, that we've slowly transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, even when you take into account world trade. The USA is still the largest manufacturer in the world, in terms of value produced, so we can't say that the transition is due to "all of our manufacturing base going to China." People have simply decided to allocate their wages towards labor-intensive products (health care, financial, etc.) rather than material goods.