From the New York Times: Razing the city to save the city

Shrinking has been out of the news for a few weeks, which isn't a surprise since nothing is really happening with it. However, the New York Times put together a piece that touches on the basics, looks at the problems, and points out there really isn't a solution in place at this point.

Excerpt from the New York Times:

"People are deciding we can't live like this anymore," said Steven A. Ogden, executive director of a nonprofit group, Next Detroit Neighborhood Initiative, which works to help stabilize communities. "It is my contention that we can't afford to wait a single day without a strategy."

Strategies are now coming from every corner, with community groups and nonprofit organization and trade groups producing frameworks.

The burst of creativity is partly a function of desperation. For the sixth decade in a row, this year's census will bring bad news: the population, already sparsely distributed over a vast 139 square miles, has declined again, to an estimated 790,000 residents, down from 951,000 people in 2000 and a high of almost 2 million in 1950. Population loss was hastened in the last few years, experts said, by the twin blows of the foreclosure crisis and jobs lost to the recession.

Read the entire article here.
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