How To Manage Decline

Story here about Flint, Michigan. In an effort to manage decline the city is razing entire districts and returning them to nature. This reduces the cost of maintaining infrastructure and services for what is left of the city. This story reminded me of the old quote from Vietnam – ‘we may have to destroy the village in order to save it’.

Flint is just north of Detroit, and the original home of General Motors. It may be familiar to you if you have seen Michael Moore’s ‘Roger and Me‘ which shows the massive impact the downsizing of GM’s factories had on the community there in the late eighties. The city hasn’t recovered since. Unemployment is currently running at approximately 20% and the population has halved from its peak.

The idea now is to actively manage the decline, and it came from a guy called Dan Kildee, the treasurer of Genesee county where Flint is located. As he says “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… Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity.”

It is an idea that seems to be catching on – Kildee has been asked by the US government and a group of charities about applying these strategies elsewhere, and is currently looking at 50 cities in the US. Plans are also afoot to split up Detroit into a small collection of urban islands, surrounded by farmland.