I saw this headline today on the web from the UK’s Telegraph…SHRINKING cities and returning them to Nature? I must be dreaming….here is a short excerpt and the link at the bottom (It appears you need to cut and paste the address into the URL bar…for some reason these blog entries don’t create a hot link…JS
US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive
By Tom Leonard in Flint, Michigan
Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic “shrink to survive” proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.
The government is 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.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5516536/US-cities-may-have-to-be-bulldozed-in-order-to-survive.html
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Alan Wiseman (“The World Without Us”) must be smiling, but I’d be even more optimistic if we heard about some three-year-old Sunbelt subdivisions getting razed. Property value decline took decades in Detroit, Cleveland, Flint, etc. as the banks only now write off those older houses as worthless. What if they started admitting that thousands of recent 3,000 sq ft, two-story air conditioning nightmares with no water and a 40-mile drive from Phoenix were worthless too? The ball might really get rolling…
Hey Jim I have an idea for an article for the Z. I emailed you about it and I’m working on it now. Will take me a week or two, I have to talk to people and research plus it will need a good amount of editing I’m sure (grammer is evil). Call me if you have questions or if my emailed ideas weren’t succinct enough.
Razing vacant housing is a good start- then lets send some stimulus dollars to create urban farms on the land as well as already vacant lots. It takes the same amount of water to farm as it takes to supply a subdivision. The produce of these urban farms would have short distances to travel to reach market.
Patches of green growth really help soothe the abrasions of the urban crush.
This reminds me of a conversation about Paolo Soleri’s ‘city of the future’ north of scottsdale, AZ, Arcosanti. This city of the future, with all needed services & jobs concentrated together, is not so different from the past cities where row houses were served along their alleyways by vendors supplying most everything; no need for cars. YES, bull doze these mistakes and start Community Sponsored Agriculture or a neighborhood gardenspace.
The ‘crash’ of the 80’s here in GJ gave rise to public lands which are now wilderness and trails.
It seems to me if we look at the longue duree of socio-natural interactions we might begin to think of this as not such a radical idea. Interesting questions to ask:
-When do cities stop being nature?
-How do cities stop being nature?
-Do cities stop being nature?
and vice versa
-When does nature become a city?
-Eric Cunningham
In the Pines
Eric’s questions are food for thought.
Termite cities built by ant societies – we consider them nature.
Bird nests made of materials from near and far, dams built of trees felled by beavers – nature.
Tools such as the pestles and mortars fashioned from stones by apes – nature.
Predators competing for hunting grounds, one group killing or driving away another – once again, we consider it nature.
As man is too closely related to the apes to be considered an alien, can any of his actions, however destructive, be apart from nature?