Obama looks to raze parts of rust-belt baseball cities

From UK Telegraph, 6/12/09, "US Cities May Have to be Bulldozed in order to Survive:" A pioneer study was done for Flint, Michigan, and Obama liked it.

• Plans are underway to raze parts of Detroit. Other target cities include baseball towns Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The Obama group has been moving at the speed of light to change this country from one thing into another, so these moves fit right in. From the Telegraph:

"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.

• 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.""....via Lucianne.com

• A new way to deal with crime and illiteracy, I guess. sm

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