Whatever you want to call it -- shrink, right-size, downsize -- it has to happen.
Excerpt:
Downsizing Detroit is no longer a question of if but when. The city
cannot afford to allow the uncontrolled shrinkage and devastation of
lost jobs, businesses, housing and people to continue. Detroit has to
figure out how to manage itself as a smaller, stronger city, like
Indianapolis, Charlotte or Denver.
Detroit faces unprecedented
social, economic and political challenges by trying to shrink itself.
But it also has an unparalleled opportunity to become a national leader
since no other city has succeeded in downsizing. Just as Detroit was a
pioneer at the dawn of the automobile age, so it can be again in our
post-industrial age.
Detroit can no longer afford to provide
basic services -- police, fire, sanitation and education -- to vacant
and sparsely populated neighborhoods. The practice is extremely costly,
much more expensive than providing the same services to fully populated
areas.
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