Urban Undevelopment – Flint, MI
Recently there has been a lot of talk in the press and on blogs about Flint, MI. This is a city that has been hit hard by the decline of the auto industry, not just this year, but the last 39 years. As noted on the site, CircletheUSA.com, Flint has shrunk from 195,000 people in 1970 to around 117,000 today. Like Detroit, it has blocks and blocks of vacant housing or empty lots. However, Flint has embarked on a program to physically shrink itself to create a more sustainable city. As noted in the New York Times Flint is relocating people from scattered homes into close in neighborhoods, and then demolishing homes and the infrastructure from the areas that they are relocating people from. They are doing this with a land bank that mostly gets property via tax sales, or buys up foreclosures, etc. By shrinking, Flint is hoping they can save tons of cash by not having to support the infrastructure from scattered residents. The concept of tighter urban development to make government services more affordable is what many planners have been pushing for years. Large lot developments are unsustainable. I believe the whole country is really beginning to rethink the whole concept of suburban development with new urbansim, a renewed focus on in-fill development, and mixed-use development.
