US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive

I'm not surprised about Flint, I wonder what other cities they are considering?

Container houses would help here, this model can grow and retract as needed not only for cities but also for families, growing as the family grows and retracting again as it decreases.

It has been successfully tried in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.

It is cost effective, environment friendly and practical.

I have been saying this for 2 years.  During the Depression, the government paid farmers not to grow crops and they killed pigs and cows.

Why keep these areas around when they outlived their use?

I also say that they should have left New Orleans go.  Build a new city away from the water so we don't have to keep pouring our tax money down the hole.  

Have the government condemn the property, give the people a check and let them start their lives elsewhere.  It would have been cheaper for the government to do it this way.

I read somewhere that it cost the government over $250,000.00 per person to save New Orleans.  I am sure a lot of those people would rather have been given a check.

There is a lot of truth in what you say, especially about pre-fab housing. Reduce costs, and put it were you need it as you need it.

New Orleans. Good example.

I like the idea of putting green spaces back in to the cities.  If you were to give(sell cheaply) to people who will agree to use it for a garden space &or a comunity garden space, it might start a close comunity.  That would be a good goal I think.

It is sad, but I can see something like that happening in Detroit.

The first building that needs to be razed in Detroit is city hall with the city council inside . Followed by the building the city of Detroit school board meets again with the board inside. Then you can raze the abandoned buildings in Detroit , Flint etc

These plans make a lot of sense, but lets look at the big picture here.

While some of these Michigan cities are in areas that have shrunk over all because of economic changes, many others are abandoned because of white flight and the suburban "dream."  Baltimore comes to mind here, and even those cities that are in areas that are shrinking over all (Buffalo) have growing suburbs! 

So - long term - it looks like we wasted to build miles out, abandoned what we had and now we're wasting those resources.  I sure hope they're at least recycling those building materials.

Again, this dismantling makes sense, but lets be smart about it.  Lets move to regional governments and cooperative village councils - so that suburbs and cities are not competing - and introduce ecological planning to these new regional governments that involve urban centers with connected by rail, bus and bike paths - all broken up by organic agriculture and wildlife habitat corridors.  Also, ABSOLUTELY NO SPRAWL, development would have to happen in the Urban/Rural patchwork until population growth theatenes the agricultural/natural habitat integrity of the region - only then would development be allowed to expand outward.

I did not know about the container homes Paschen,sounds like a good compromise.

Out of thirteen responses, Steve Redder is the only one who comes close to understanding the cause of the problem.

After years of Democrat control, Democrats have so totally ruined these cities that the best solution is to bulldoze them?  Now, that's utopia!  And Barry Soetoro wants to do for the rest of America what Democrat rule has done for Michigan!  Hey, but maybe things will improve now that Barry is running GM & Chrysler. /sarcasm

How can they afford to do this? Won't they have to buy the property/buildings which they wish to destroy from the owners at fair market price? What about the people who refuse to move? Are they going to force them to move? How can that happen in America?

It seems silly to knock down sturdy buildings just because they are empty. Better solution, I would think, would be to adjust taxes down and create an environment encouraging of businesses and industry so that employers will move into the empty buildings and give people a reason to move into the houses. Give people a reason to come and, rather than knocking down perfectly good buildings, they may find themselves in the desireable situation of needing to build more.

brainwashed .all of you

The idea of "knocking down" buildings is one that needs to have heavy regulation. if i were, say, to rent a buldozer and drive willy nilly through the structures of quote un quote abandoned  detroit then the area would more quickly return to nature; but as Chris J said, it would be a waste of resources. systemattically dismantling, recycling and/or storing the materials for further use would be a much better solution. 

I agree with Chris J almost completly except we should avoid urban sprawl just as we would (and do) avoid dumping nuclear waste in our front yards. there are many innovations out there which would provide humans the means to exist in a tenth or less space then we currently occupy. look at Sky City (google it if you dont know it) designed by the japanese. that structure could house significantly large populations and by all rights things like that should have already begun to replace our urban centers as he put it. 

Pashen had the right idea too. container homes or modular style homes should definatly be used when and where possible for our suburbs because most people who live in suburbs have a home ownership average of about 10 -15 years, thats it. if the house was modular it could be disassembled and re assembled elsewhere as a new house.

I have a requirement that should be added to the mix. I feel that the federal government should initiate a national building standard . like the local building codes do now, they would regulate the minimum and optimum standards for new construction, remodling ect of homes and other structures. unlike most building codes now though this federal standard would require that all work must meet a minimum environment rating as well. this would not only improve public health but also the health of the natural areas around the homes we build.

As far as government is concerned, the current structure functions on its most basic levels but needs some serious tweeking. i think that all sub urban areas (towns, hamlets, suburbs ect) should have a council of elected officials to manage the population center. and the format of this council would also be used to govern larger cites  and metropoli as well but in a slightly different fashion.

the council structure for a small population center is thus:

Environmental Manager

Agriculture Officer

Habitat Officer

Finance Manager

Transportation Manager

Energy Resource Manager

Chair of the Educational Council

Commisioner

Chair of the Board of Medicine

These officials would be public electies and would have fixed terms. larger cities would have sub councils for each office.

with these changes i think we may just survive as a species.