'US Cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive'

[Padfoot]

I actually think this is a good policy as long as anyone still living or operating a business in the "to be razed" area is given a reasonable opportunity to move somewhere else in the city.  Youngstown, Ohio is another example of a city implementing this policy and thus far it seems to be working pretty well for them.  The city saves money on utilities, road maintenance, and other expenses while simultaneously removing large swaths of blighted and/or abandoned properties.  This isn't about demolishing individual buildings one by one.  Its about tearing down large areas of the outer reaches of the city and relocating the few remaining people and business in that area closer to the city core.  Essentially they're just creating large unofficial nature parks along the city's outer borders.

For those crying about how this only encourages sprawl I invite you to take a look at an aerial map of Genesee County.  There are still vast tracts of rural landscape surrounding Flint.   There isn't a massive ring of suburban sprawl surrounding this city.  Plus the county's population as a whole is on the decline so its not as if the people are moving out of Flint and into neighboring cities and towns.

What the leaders of Flint have realized is that people are leaving because the jobs are gone and they aren't coming back in the foreseeable future.  So rather than taking a huge risk with money they don't have trying to lure the jobs and people back, they're simply accepting for the time being that their city is becoming smaller.  And with that smaller city in mind, they've begun tearing down sections of the city that have been mostly abandoned.  I really don't see what the harm is here.