Detroit's leaders see the handwriting on the wall even if some community activists are wilfully blind. The city is preparing to downsize itself to a sustainable scale:
There is money to be made in deconstruction. Homes, roads, and infrastructure cost money to be demolished, but fortunately those involve low-skill jobs that anyone can do. Putting people to work razing old neighborhoods won't be hard and lots of jobless people will line up to do the work. These same people can be new urban farmers on the empty plots that remain. A little training in permaculture and aquaponics, plus some capital from microloans, can make them self-sufficient rather quickly.
I wrote last year about the pressing need to unbuild much of the suburban waste left after the housing bubble. This is a moral imperative and will become a trend all across America very soon. Consolidating residents into compact, sustainable communities is embarrassing in the short term but absolutely necessary if cities are to remain economically and aesthetically viable. Detroit can show us the way if its citizens embrace the economics of resilient communities.
Nota bene: Anthony J. Alfidi is long puts against IYR at the time this post was published.
Detroit, the very symbol of American industrial might for most of the 20th century, is drawing up a radical renewal plan that calls for turning large swaths of this now-blighted, rusted-out city back into the fields and farmland that existed before the automobile.
There is money to be made in deconstruction. Homes, roads, and infrastructure cost money to be demolished, but fortunately those involve low-skill jobs that anyone can do. Putting people to work razing old neighborhoods won't be hard and lots of jobless people will line up to do the work. These same people can be new urban farmers on the empty plots that remain. A little training in permaculture and aquaponics, plus some capital from microloans, can make them self-sufficient rather quickly.
I wrote last year about the pressing need to unbuild much of the suburban waste left after the housing bubble. This is a moral imperative and will become a trend all across America very soon. Consolidating residents into compact, sustainable communities is embarrassing in the short term but absolutely necessary if cities are to remain economically and aesthetically viable. Detroit can show us the way if its citizens embrace the economics of resilient communities.
Nota bene: Anthony J. Alfidi is long puts against IYR at the time this post was published.
