- Douglas Adams
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
As a local government type of guy, I find this article very interesting. It is actually a topic that I have considered before. The idea that rust belt cities, (or any other city past its prime for that matter) would find it healthy to actually shrink instead of seek growth or even the status quo.
I think the article points out some major benefits of the plan. In being involved with the management of my own Township I can tell you that public services like fire, police, and public works are immensely expensive. Road maintenance is a huge cost, especially for a place like Detroit that experiences hard winters. You’ve got to plow and salt the roads in the winter and fix potholes in the summer and then every so often a road flat out needs repaved on top of it. Then you’ve got water lines, sewer pipes, public sidewalks and curbs, its a massive budget drain. In good times, a municipality is pulling in enough tax dollars to hopefully break even. Detroit is far removed from good times. When three people live on a block, their tax revenue isn’t fixing many roads.
So for Detroit’s leaders to stand up and say look, we have some resources but they need to be focused to be effective and we can’t focus them with the current infrastructure, to me shows massive amounts of leadership. The leaders haven’t given up on the City, far from it. Obviously the mayor and his team want to preserve what is possible but they are very realistic on what that means. The plan is guaranteed to get mixed reactions and the range of these reactions could easily descend the whole way down into violence when people do not want to give up their homes (and who can blame them?). So again, to come out with this plan really takes some guts and I give Mayor Bing a lot of credit here.
Frankly, I think the plan would be successful too. The amount of services a municipality provides has to correspond to the population and the amount of tax revenue being brought in, otherwise a balanced budget can only happen with state and federal funding being diverted and thats simply not healthy or sustainable. The leadership of Detroit obviously wants to be sustainable and shrinking the city may well do it.
As an added benefit, they’re going to really beautify the area. Trees and farms look a lot better than slums. So maybe the plan has an unintended benefit, not only does it make the city more manageable short term, but long term it could create a healthier more attractive place that more people want to move to. The move from urban to semi rural could only last a generation or two before that land is eventually redeveloped. Its the old “broken windows” philosophy in a way. Right now its got to be depressing to drive around Detroit and see it crumble. Change the landscape and you might just change the mindset as well.
