Detroit's new exercise in deurbanization

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Tue, 2010-03-09 08:50

Doug

Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.

Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green.

I wonder if this might not be the trend of the future if or when higher energy prices make the suburbs as we know them unsustainable.

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Tue, 2010-03-09 09:44

KenS

Totally different phenomena.

For one thing- Detroit has a vital small city core, and thriving suburbs [with a lot of businesses having moved out there too], with a lot of wasteland in between.

That doesn't fit lower energy use regime. Not to mention that when/if the suburbs become unsustainable, they will be simply abandoned in a non-orderly fashion... with stragglers staying behind to live off the bones, much as happens in a lot of Detroit neighbourhoods now.

The razing off abandoned homes has been going on for a number of years now. There have even been one or two weird suburban style redevelopments- new streets and everything. While many US cities had urban flight, there is nothing like Detroit- where even a huge chunk of the working class, poor and black folk dispersing to the suburbs... in many cases walking away from nice homes with paid off mortgages. Neighbourhoods just too unsafe to live in, even for people who hated to leave.