Urban non-renewal in Flint, Michigan

Posted: April 01, 2009, 3:30 PM by NP Editor
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/04/01/urban-no\
n-renewal-in-flint-michigan.aspx

Here's a novel idea: Shut down neighbourhoods filled with
abandoned homes and businesses, cut off services and bulldoze
what's left. It's no more than an off-the-cuff remark by the
"temporary mayor" of Flint, Michigan, ground zero for post-
industrial decay in the crumbling home of the auto industry.
But why not?

The Flint Journal reports:
City Council President Jim Ananich said the idea has been on his
radar for years. The city is getting smaller and should downsize
its services accordingly by asking people to leave sparsely
populated areas, he said. "It's going to happen whether we like
it or not," he said. "We'd have to be creative about it, but it's
something worth looking into. We're not there yet, but it could
definitely happen."
When cities grow, you build. When they shrink, why maintain the
ruins?

The Journal reports:
Last year, the city of Youngstown, Ohio, proposed incentives to
encourage people to move out of nearly empty blocks and relocate
to more populated areas closer to the heart of the city. Some
people were offered upward of $50,000, according to news reports.
The idea was to shut down entire streets and bulldoze abandoned
properties so the city could discontinue services such as police
patrols and street lighting, according to a CNN report.
Maybe not everyone's idea of urban renewal, but different.

Jct: Shutting down whole neighborhoods of housing as more and
more people become homeless seems efficient.

Better to start a community currency to put unemployed people to
work upgrading housing with their rent paid for by the time
currency they earned; better to start a state bond currency like
in Argentina where Argentina's government workers were faced with
cuts but their unions talked 6 state governments into paying them
with small-denomination state bonds which could be used to pay
for state services and taxes and which everyone accepted as
useful currency. American government-employee unions could demand
bond currency from American governments too.

And if those levels of government don't want to provide
neighborhood currencies for community use, then many communities
are starting up their own LETS (Local Employment-Trading
Software) barter timebanks to take over until the governments get
their financial acts together.
Best of all, when the local currency is pegged to the Time
Standard of Money (how many dollars/hour child labor) Hours
earned locally can be intertraded with other timebanks globally!
In 1999, I paid for 39/40 nights in Europe with an IOU for a
night back in Canada worth 5 Hours. U.N. Millennium Declaration
UNILETS Resolution C6 to governments is for a time-based currency
to restructure the global financial architecture.
See my banking systems engineering analysis at
http://youtube.com/kingofthepaupers with an index of articles at
http://johnturmel.com/kotp.htm