Tom Leonard Telegraph (London), June 12, 2009
The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which 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, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.
Mr 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 America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.
In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres 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 Mr 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 programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was “both a cultural and political taboo” about admitting decline in America.
“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 centre, the once grand Durant Hotel—named after William Durant, GM’s founder—is a symbol of the city’s decline, said Mr 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 Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American 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 American thing. Across the US, 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 were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.
If the city didn’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 very cheaply.
They could then knock them down or sell them on to owners who will occupy them. The city wants to specialise in health and education services, both areas which cannot easily be relocated abroad.
The local authority has restored the city’s attractive but formerly deserted centre but has pulled down 1,100 abandoned homes in outlying areas.
Mr 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 were already obvious, he said.
The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee.
“Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow,” he said.
Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution “defeatist” but he insisted it was “no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again”.
Original article
(Posted on June 15, 2009)
Comments
Excellent. Let’s start with anything Bauhaus inspired.
Detroit is already going this way; large areas of the city look virtually like rural areas. And even some larger buildings that have been abandoned have become nests for birds of prey never really seen in cities.
It’s not entirely the fault of economic decline and deindustrialization, though that is part of it. The other reason is race.
Reading these comments would leave one to believe that these vast urban centers were simply depopulated as people packed up and abandoned well-tended houses and neighborhoods. The truth is that these areas were devastated by (mainly) black crime which made normal life simply impossible for normal people.
Had these areas not been reduced to something that looks eerily like contemporary Mogadishu, falling housing demand would have rendered decently maintained neighborhoods affordable to millions of law-abiding lower income families seeking starter homes. Of course, the neighborhoods were destroyed and the law-abiding lower income families fled, as best they could, for their lives.
Non-white post 1965 immigrants and their geneline account for 100 percent of current and future population growth. If the 1965 immigration act had not been passed the US popualtion would have stabilized at 250 million and America would b 90 percent Native Born White.
In addition to a stabilized population at 250 million and Native Born White Americans being 90 percent of the population, America would be a labor self-sufficient nation. Why would any of these three things been terrible? Well, it wouldn’t have been terrible..as far as Native Born White American racail interests go. What would have been so terrible about America being labor self-sufficient? If America was labor self-sufficient, Native Born White Americans would be paid a high real wage. Of course, this is the reason why the greedy cheating class-owners of the Republican and Democratic parties-revolted against Native Born America and imported scab labor from india,pakistan,china,mexico,turkey,iran,mexico and other nations…to transfer wealth from ordinary Native Born White Americans to the greedy cheating class…
I agree with this guy that it is a very American thing to think that growth is good. If not for the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 our population would not have increased very much.
And of course the real reason for Flint’s decline will never be discussed. Wikipedia includes a paragraph about the supposed terrible racism in Flint’s history, but does not give the current racial makeup of the city.
We can’t even use correct terms to describe geographic areas of the US. Flint is said to be in the “rust belt” but if there is something magical about the particular region the city is in, then why are suburbs in that same area doing fine? It’s the people living there that make the difference, not the location along some mysterious “belt.”
No doubt this “turning the city back to nature” will be “spun” as an environmental success, but it is really an environmental disaster, It’s accompanied by sprawl into other areas and a terrible waste of resources.
You can see what’s being done by going to google maps (an amazing piece of web technology), typing in the address below and then click on ‘street view’
376 Sycamore St, Buffalo, Erie, New York 14204
Rotate the map to see just how large an area is being bulldozed. It’s so desolate, you’d think it’s a rural landscape.
When the Poles inhabited this neighborhood it was a bustling and thriving community. Now it’s a wasteland. Literally.
Gee, I wonder who the inhabitants of these areas are or were???
Actually it doesnt sound like a bad idea. Except for one minor detail:
“The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee.”
My question is who is currently residing in these “more affluent areas” and how do they feel about their soon to be new neighbors?
i would love to see the revival of cities in America. history shows us that a rural people or movement is ultimately doomed to extinction or obscurity. unfortunately it’s probably safe to say that these plans for revitalizing our cities will not take race into account, if anything it will encourage more diversity. and any whites that do return to the city will probably be similar to the ones who already live there: rich, extremely liberal, and with no racial consciousness. i live in Raleigh, NC and that is exactly what is happening to downtown. whites are returning but they aren’t creating the city culture of old, they are creating the current liberal city culture: fancy cafes, gay districts, trendy ethnic restaurants, extreme pretentiousness, and, worst of all, sanctuary policies for illegal immigrants.
“They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.” And my prey tell what are the DEMOGRAPHICS of these cities as of the late 60’s to the present? Do tell? /sarcasm
We all know why these cities need to be razed, but the Marxists in charge keep claiming everything but the truth.
If crime equals poverty then why in the heck is one of the poorest areas, which happens to be the Appalachian Mountains in the US virtually crime free? The million-dollar question to these blooming idiots.
For a few years, I have been thinking that we ought to dismantle large sections of urban and suburban America. Many cities are cancers on the nation, consuming much and producing little. The first step, however, is to remove the social carcinogens. Any program that does not look first to the interests of productive Whites is doomed, as well as immoral. Unless a plan faces racial realities, it’s just more “urban renewal”, another effort to make silk purses out of sow’s ears.
“Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow,” he said.
What he means is, it will become overgrown with weeds and trash. It will become a Mecca for druggies, the homeless and other criminals. In other words the typical vacant lot one see in the inner city ghettos.
I guess it’s not coincidental that Detroit, Philly, Memphis, Baltimore, and Flint have large black populations. I grew up in Calgary, Alberta, in the 1980s, which was mostly a terrible economic decade for the city, but in (at that time) the very largely white city, nobody was talking about demolishing what already existed; instead, people strived for economic recovery, and when it came, they added to what had been there before. Which explains why Calgary is a much bigger city now than it was during the last major recession. Tokyo was destroyed during World War II, but the Japanese reconstructed it. What this article does not say is that non-blacks do not want to be around majority black cities, and blacks do not seem to have the ability or motivation to maintain, let alone expand, municipalities.
Gee, 50 years ago when the population of Flint consisted of 2nd genration eastern european and old American scotch irish from the south, the town was a thriving, wonderful, crime free community with good schools.
Only thing that changed is the population.
Look at my hometown, San Francisco. 80 years ago Fillmore neighborhood was a thriving, wonderful Japanese-Jewish neighborhood. It had the most beautiful middle class housing stock in the city. Not quite Pacific Heights standards, but gorgeous pre 1906 earthquake victorians.
Then the Japanese were sent to detention camps during WW2. Blacks were brought up from the south to work in war industries and the harbor, the most important Pacific port in America at the time. The blacks drove the Jews out by their usual reign of murder, rape and terrorism. By 1945 Fillmore was a worse and more crime ridden ghetto than the worst of Oakland.
25 years later, 1970, gay men began to move into Fillmore. Not having women and children to protect they were able to defend themselves against the feral population. Slowly they bought houses and retook the area block by block.
Now Fillmore is once more the lovely neighborhood it was 80 years ago. Why? Because Whites have replaced the blacks who drove out the Whites during WW2.
“The city wants to specialise in health and education services,”
The city is out of its affirmative action mind if it thinks a hospital will move to Flint where its employees, patients and visitors will be robbed, beaten and assaulted by the locals.
How many hospitals are dangerous to go near because the blacks have made the neighborhoods so dangerous?
Urban Renewal add one more failure to Democrats List of failures. Their experiment, their failure, our money and our neck. These people need to be gillotined, hanging is too good for them. The French had the right idea. If these people are not killed they will just repeat again what they have failed at.
” would love to see the revival of cities in America. history shows us that a rural people or movement is ultimately doomed to extinction or obscurity. unfortunately it’s probably safe to say that these plans for revitalizing our cities will not take race into account, if anything it will encourage more diversity. and any whites that do return to the city will probably be similar to the ones who already live there: rich, extremely liberal, and with no racial consciousness. i live in Raleigh, NC and that is exactly what is happening to downtown. whites are returning but they aren’t creating the city culture of old, they are creating the current liberal city culture: fancy cafes, gay districts, trendy ethnic restaurants, extreme pretentiousness, and, worst of all, sanctuary policies for illegal immigrants.”
This shows a lack of understanding. Trendy, affluent liberals do not and never will live with blacks. They only stand back from a difference, pretend to be better than race-conscious whites, and watch the devestation.
In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry,
Detroit was, has been, shattered by black governance.
No doubt this “turning the city back to nature” will be “spun” as an environmental success,
Chernobyl is “turning back to nature” and as a program pointed out, life is doing well without humans there.
When the Poles inhabited this neighborhood it was a bustling and thriving community.
But when blacks take over, the same area is called “rich” and/or “vibrant” those are of course, code words for blacks.
For a few years, I have been thinking that we ought to dismantle large sections of urban and suburban America.
Sure, sure, and cause the black blight to spread into the rest of America even worse than now. At least in the big cities, we who choose to, can avoid going to those cities.
The States with large minority populations and bloated debt loads will be put to work on multipliable construction projects in revitalization attempts; pressuring State and Federal government to raise taxes; look for the government to counter by introducing (value added tax) one modeled after similar taxes already in place in Europe.
A good example of a (value added tax) is tax imposed on a manufacturer when he sells to a wholesaler and again when a wholesaler sells to a retailer and again when the consumer buys.
There’s a site, zipskinny.com, where you can type in a zip code and get demographics—such as how many white, black, etc.
I checked out East St. Louis, IL, which I heard was REALLY bad. Sure enough—96.7% black. And looking at Wikipedia, I saw that it has one of the highest crime rates in the country: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_St._Louis,_Illinois#Crime
I bet if that got bulldozed no one would miss it.
This sounds like a good idea…unless this is an excuse to move poor minorities into white neighborhoods. Or worse yet: this could be the first step in moving people from suburban areas into more concentrated city areas. Population control, you know.
These people are naive if they think that nature will simply reclaim the city and become a serene meadow. These are urban areas we’re talking about, there is no top soil left beneath the pavement just concrete and metal that will rust and decay to match the atmosphere created by the diverse city dwellers.
This is what you do when you live outside the hurricane-prone coastal areas.
This is just another gentrification scheme to push low income persons from the center of the city by simply eliminating their housing choices.
Wow! I guess they will need to bus in the maids and gardeners.
10 — GA Peach wrote : “They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.” And what, pray tell, what are the DEMOGRAPHICS of these cities as of the late 60’s to the present? Do tell? /sarcasm
We all know why these cities need to be razed, but the Marxists in charge keep claiming everything but the truth.
Of course, it couldn’t have anything to do with race! That’s unthinkable. Not allowed in a nation ruled by Political Correctness. Must be something in the water that’s causing this.
That reminds me of the same situation with the housing projects that were built some 40 years ago to uplift people out of the “ghetto”. They very quickly became known as nests of crime and violence. Obviously, there was something harmful in those buildings!
More recently, it’s been the new thing to tear down those old “projects” that were once thought to represent enlightenment and progress. Even the word “Projects” was banned by the administration in NYC, so negative were its overtones.
Well now, as a logical progression of this mentality, instead of tearing down projects, we’ve graduated to tearing down cities! It figures. What next?
But nobody asks why it’s necessary. Just what is in that water anyway?
Strange how things go full-circle.
The perpetual growth policies of the corporate elites in the US will come to end. All indications are that it is comming to an end like all growth usually does….but only after the destruction of forests,farmland,beautifull uncluttered open space ,destruction of West Virginias mountain ranges through strip mining,wiping out of crystal clear streams,short waiting lists to Yellow Stone and Yosemenite-well,this is already gone,….all of this and much more so that asian LEGAL IMMIGRANTS,mexicans,africans,hmong and muslims can come to America and have large families.
There are millions of Native Born White Americas-lost in sports pornography-who are not paying attention. Very soon, they will wake up one day and not know what hit them.
The American West is in its worst draught in 500 years. Despite this, non-white post-1965 LEGAL IMMIGRATON and illegal immigration is allowed to continue apace.
If America is not a joke nation yet, it will be one in a few years. At America’s front door their is a big sign that says:COME ON IN ALL YA NON_WHITES. BE FRUITFULL AND MULTIPLY!!!!
Native Born White Americans are going to lose everything-very soon.
America has been transformed into a birthing clinic for high-fertility post 1965 asians,hispanics,muslims and africans.
How can any THINKING and OBSERVING person not see the OBVIOUS? White people develop, build and occupy, then come the blacks always lurking in the background, waiting to invade into what they have not developed (NAME ONE PLACE ON THE PLANET EARTH WHERE blacks HAVE BUILT UP ANYTHING OF VALUE OR CREATED A PLACE WHERE IT IS SAFE TO WALK THE STREETS, EVEN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT? YOU CAN’T BECAUSE THERE ISN’T ONE!) They bring their Demands For Entitlement and their sub-Saharan culture, destroying all that has come before them. At one point DETROIT was a shining jewel in America, now it is just another Zimbabwe. What’s new or different here?
“The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.”
No, it isn’t. Politicians seldom have ideas, and I’m sure this case is no exception. I first read about this idea in “The Atlantic”, around fifteen years ago - I forget who wrote the article - some journalist summarizing the ideas of some professor or policy wonk or another.
“Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.”
So, Memphis is now a mid-western “Rust Belt” city? It isn’t “Rust Belt” cities which now lie in ruins. It is “Black Belt” cities.
Interesting concept. How about turning these areas into gardens?Shopping at my local supermarker is like being in several foreign countries. The produce section is filled with signs signifying that goods are either from Mexico, Hondorus, Guatamala, etc. How about some fruit and vegetables from the good old USA? Anyone remember that once-proud nation? We produced all the goods and services we needed. Let’s do it again!
“…The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee…”
Like Mike Harrigan, I too was struck by this statement and wondered if it is THE main reason all of this is being done—social engineering to move blacks into ‘more affluent’ neighborhoods and densify cities at the same time.
I think the current socialist administration has a draconian Master Plan to transform the US into European-style cities, mandating that we only drive tiny, ugly ‘green’ cars, mandating how much space each of us can have for housing, rationing water, ram-rodding Section 8 housing into every development, along with rationed health care and control of the economy.
This is the ‘change’ obama was pontificating about.
Bon
Ok, so they’re bulldozing or planning on bulldozing large sections of our old inner cities. They’re doing this to empty, abandoned buildings, or to those that will soon be empty and abandoned.
So, where have the denizens of the inner cities gone? Do you think they’re going to be standing around in the same old inner city, newly homeless?
Section 8 housing! They’ve been moved out to the suburbs and into apartment complexes that have to admit them and take Section 8 funding.
The crime wave is spreading fast into the suburbs as these become innercitified.
This is all by design, too. A foreign power that wanted to take down and destroy America couldn’t have done any better than this.
A year or two ago, one of the posters here at AR-and over at Chronicles- made a great post about growth and living within limits. If he or she is still around, please make a post in this section. It was a brilliant post-one that I couldn’t top. This is one of the reasons why older comments should be archived also.
From Zipareacode.net - Flint, MI:
White Population:: 127,407
Using Google Earth’s street view, I took a “tour” of Detroit. I looked at the street my mother lived on as a child—Vermont Street—and thought, wow, I wouldn’t want to be here in the daytime! Where my family and I lived on Trumbull when I was a toddler is now an empty lot, since that apartment house had burned down not long after we moved to the suburbs.
Some parts are starting to look like a war zone.
Then, for the fun of it, I took a look at East St. Louis. Wouldn’t want to set foot there!
I have learned, over the years, that if you’re in a part of town that looks a bit seedy, and has bars on the windows and blacks walking around—best not to stick around. While going through Cleveland on my way to taking my child to the zoo, I go through one of these parts, and I stay alert and keep my doors locked and windows up.
“…look for the government to counter by introducing (value added tax) one modeled after similar taxes already in place in Europe….A good example of a (value added tax) is tax imposed on a manufacturer when he sells to a wholesaler and again when a wholesaler sells to a retailer and again when the consumer buys… “
Mark:
Can’t think of a better plan to drive the economy even more underground and create larger black markets.
In LA it’s already happening and I’ve read estimates that up to 40% of the local economy here is cash-based—meanwhile, entitlement services continue to go through the roof. Many of the ‘immigrant’ communities have created their own cash-based economies, only dealing with themselves, of course.
I too have started dealing in cash on any transactions I possibly can—it often gets me a discount and better service. As the chimney sweep told me when I asked if he accepted cash: Cash is King! (he knocked $10 off his price too).
Better use it before it becomes even more worthless than it already is…
Bon
And we make fun of Soviet central planning! I am sure big corporate developers love this idea.
The other side to this is that the real-estate developers will continue building shoddy tract housing in the mountain west, where there isn’t always enough water to maintain the bluegrass lawns people like so much.
While the idea of replacing urban blight with forests and meadows sounds good, my prediction is that the same people who have destroyed these cities as livable places and driven out their former white occupants will simply fill the meadows with trash and stolen or burned-out vehicles.
Blacks had entire cities virtually handed to them, and they didn’t take care of them. Why would anyone believe they would treat natural, open spaces any better?
Some nice Photos and statistics that show a link between demographics, crime, and decay.http://www.white-history.com/hwrdet4a.htm
Alexandra:
East St. Louis has already been self-bulldozed, for the most part. Large formerly residential chunks of city look like a rural area. It’s in the river bottoms so it won’t be long until horseradish farmers move back in.
Many of ESL’s problematic blacks have moved on to Belleville.
Howard wrote at 7:16 PM on June 15:
Capitalism wants and even requires an ever expanding population in order to keep supporting itself. Big profits can’t be made from stablized populations.
the Soviet Republic of New Jersey wrote at 9:52 PM on June 15:
The above is a great example of how a gloss over of history leads to complete misunderstandings and failure. The French Revolution only replaced a benign well intentioned king who went broke financing the American Revolution with a horrid, bloody, revolution that produced Napoleon. He ravaged Europe and killed off a couple generations of Frances finest young men. France has been on the decline ever since. The same for the Tsar, who was replaced with a far more monsterous “regime.”
So go ahead, charge the Bastille, repeat history yourself.
“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 very cheaply.
They could then knock them down or sell them on to owners who will occupy them. (Emphasis added.) The city wants to specialise in health and education services, both areas which cannot easily be relocated abroad.”
Kind of like Mugabe’s “war veterans” being given farms stolen from whites, don’t you think? Knok ‘em down now, or knock ‘em down later (after the new “homeowners” have had their way with them).
“Some nice Photos and statistics that show a link between demographics, crime, and decay. The Ruins Of Detroit ” (Link provided.)
Every once in awhile, I look at this website with morbid fascination. Some of the houses that have been “bombed out” look like they’d be worth millions today.
What kills me is that, even in the ruin and decay, the architectures of these buildings are beautiful! And it makes me angry at our own race for not fighting, tooth and nail, to hold onto it! Trying to flee the blacks threw them out of architectural beauty into soulless, dreary little tract homes out in the suburbs.
Unfortunately, I agree with the politician who feels it is better to demolish these ruins and let the area go back to the wilderness. But he is making one big mistake.
If I were he, I wouldn’t move people from bad neighborhoods into more affluent ones unless I wanted the blight to spread. He needs to understand that it’s the people that are the problem, not the lack of money. If they couldn’t take pride in and maintain their current neighborhood, but let it go to hell in a handbasket, they are only going to ruin other neighborhoods.
I would simply bulldoze and clear the unoccupied homes and leave the stragglers where they are. And if the population is too sparse, I’d tell them they are no longer entitled to city services and they are on their own.
I’d get even more draconian than that. For the folks who are still numerous enough to get city services, I’d demand that any adult on welfare get sterilized or lose all benefits and then I’d put a limit on how long the able-bodied could get benefits. The shrinking taxbase would be my perfect built-in excuse.
I guarantee these people would “self-deport” to areas where sillier heads, softer hearts, and plumper pockets prevail and they’d no longer be a problem. Eliminate the problem and people who build businesses and pay their taxes would return.
Wild-Eyed Charlie:
Thanks for the links to ‘The Ruins of Detroit.’ Amazing isn’t it (although sad).
I posted a link to the Ruins of once-beautiful and safe SA—a country built and created by Whites, torn asunder and turned into a hell-hole by blacks.
On the site, http://www.zasucks.com/, there are before and after pictures of beautiful hotels, parks, department stores and architectural gems that have been utterly destroyed by blacks—windows broken out, trash strewn in the street, building defaced—posters report that the natives openly urinate and defacate. One photo shows an ‘after’ view of the pool of a once-grand hotel—there is a little brackish, vile water left in the bottom that the natives use to wash their clothes!
http://dojbusdepot.blogspot.com/
Bon
