The GOOD 100: Bulldozing Cities
- Posted by: Dan Kildee
- on October 10, 2009 at 9:00 am
Small Is Beautiful: The case for shrinking cities
The quality of a city is determined by what life is like for the people who live there—not by how many people live there.
So why is my suggestion that my hometown of Flint should shrink—reducing the “built” environment—creating such a stir? Is our American obsession with growth and expansion so pervasive that a community would rather fail at being large than succeed and become a smaller place?
Flint is the birthplace of General Motors. It was once the center of the automotive universe, with a population of 200,000 and more than 80,000 people working for that one company. Flint exported cars and imported cash—and we thought that it would never end. The company town’s 1965 master plan, still the formal plan for the city, expected the population to grow to 250,000. But today, those GM jobs are nearly all gone; the population hovers at just over 100,000 and is falling.
So, I have made a simple suggestion: that we redesign our city for the population that we actually have, not for the city we once were. Flint has lost 90,000 residents during the last 40 years, and those residents did not take their houses with them. Left behind is a city comprised of some vibrant neighborhoods, and some that are populated with empty houses, reminding the few residents still there that they live in a failed place.
And there are people who live in neighborhoods that could go either way. It is mainly those residents that I want to help, so that rather than being surrounded by thousands of empty and abandoned houses, residents of Flint would have a choice: live in one of the dense and sustainable neighborhoods that our population can actually support, or live in a more rural part of the city, surrounded by a garden, or a meadow, or even a stand of trees.
The “free market” failed Flint already.
Critics of this idea span the political spectrum. From the right it’s called social engineering, imposing the will of government onto the “free market.” To some of my friends on the left, I am “anti-urban,” giving up rather than fighting to repopulate my city.
They’re both wrong. The “free market” has failed Flint already, and the best way to make the city attractive again is to rid it of blight and abandonment. By making it attractive to the residents that already live here, maybe someday it will attract new residents as well.
This plan would never force anyone to leave his or her home; rather, it would give residents choices where now they have one option only: to live surrounded by blight.
I am not against growth. I’ll be thrilled if Flint grows again. I just don’t believe the only way Flint will become a better place is to somehow convince 90,000 people to move back to the city overnight. There has to be another way.
In 2002, I created a land bank, a public authority to take control of abandoned property. Since then, we have acquired 9,000 properties, comprising 14 percent of the land in Flint. We have demolished more than 1,000 dilapidated and unsalvageable houses, replaced that ugliness with neighborhood gardens, and expanded the “side lots” of hundreds of homeowners. And we have restored historic buildings that have long been forgotten. Shrinking the city does not mean surrender—we just rebuild where it makes sense to rebuild and return part of the city to nature.
This system is self-financed. We re-engineered the tax-speculator system to create a system that redirects control of land and speculator profits to create public value from empty spaces.
Flint can be a good city again, with vibrant, walkable neighborhoods interspersed with land that has been given back to nature, land that is beautiful. But to get there, we need a new map that does not rely on the false wish that everyone would come back. The current residents deserve better than that.
Kildee is the treasurer of Genessee County, Michigan, the county which contains the city of Flint. His plan to remove abandoned houses in the city has come under fire from both sides of the political spectrum.
Flint photo by flickr user (cc) karpov85
DISCUSSION: 7 Comments
This is an interesting article. I think part of the dilemma comes from the notion that change has to be “sweeping” – we typically operate on an all-or-nothing spectrum. I think the idea of containing growth and rebuilding on the good parts of the city is a good one. I am wondering what you might think of the similarities between Flint and a city like Oakland, California (my city)? There are many great (safe) neighborhoods, but they tend to be more well off and the poorer neighborhoods are the ones that need the help (namely East and West Oakland). The free market certainly has not helped the residents there. In fact many parts of Oakland are starting to be redeveloped/gentrified but East and West Oakland remain for the most part untouched.
The free market will continue to work its “magic” until hidden (jobs created/retained) forces fully stabilize. Flint’s getting close to this point and GOOD things are happening. Having a vision/plan that helps manage this stabilization period will set the tone for future generations. Let others talk…we’re beyond it.
“So why is my suggestion that my hometown of Flint should shrink…creating such a stir?”Well, I’d say that it’s because you never took the idea to the citizens. It wasn’t the Land Bank’s fault that the ‘cat was let out of the bag,’ but it is the Land Bank’s fault for stoking the resulting hysteria. Instead of coming out and stating exactly what “shrinking” meant (and could mean) to the citizens of Flint, talking to them, getting their ideas on what a smaller city means or looks like, you went to the national and international media. You were inviting Rush Limbaugh to come to Flint to talk about the idea before you even bothered to ask the actual citizens living there. Only now, over half a year since initial up-roar, are citizen’s getting a chance to engage the Land Bank in this idea. But we’re now faced with months and months of ill-will, misunderstandings, and a great deal of confusion and frustration about the intent of the Land Bank and its partners. And we’re not even going to talk about shrinking anymore, because that’s bad and now has lots of “negative connotations,” and provide some information about Flint’s situation, but not enough to really change the way people look at, envision or approach the problem, and get people’s idea on what “green” stuff they want the vacant land to be.”Shrinking” Flint could be the most amazing and visionary process this city has ever seen–one that could positively impact not just Flint, but cities like it. Instead, because of the way this subject has been handled–a “process” that I’ve been completely dumbfounded by since the very beginning–it looks a lot like we’re now faced with a level of work that’s going to be on par with the sort of political pandering and lowest-common-denominator type thinking that’s put Flint in this position in the first place!I want better, and this city deserves better.
And the fact that this entry is titled, “Bulldozing Cities,” as part of the GOOD 100 should cause you a great deal of concern…
Let it be noted for the record that GOOD’s title “Bulldozing Cities” is a riff on Rush Limbaugh’s public comments on the concept of city right-sizing………………………………………………………………………………………………..As to the critique of the program above, my understanding is that surveys show broad public understanding and support, though naturally people want to see how the idea will be developed to benefit their neighborhood. At a recent community forum, most attendees held such views. It’s understood, though, that there will be a few individuals who are hard to satisfy………………………………………………………………………………………………….Personally, I’m much more interested in the merit of the Land Bank’s ideas and actions than I am in what Rush Limbaugh has to say about them.
Grrrr. There has to be a way of getting this comment software to allow a paragraph break. 8^(
Good idea about not growing a city for just the sake of growing.I am a carpenter rebuilding / restoring buildings in Baltimore for 30 plus years . We must use all the brown fields and worn out sections of cities.The infrastructure is in place.Do it now!