‘Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic “shrink to survive” proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.’

via US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive – Telegraph.

see also this /. post

Pretty interesting story about how vast potions of formerly prime land within cities are being razed in order to return them to nature and reduce the drain on government (and related) serivces. Having been to Detroit (only for a short weekend) I was amazed at how run down and empty large portions of the area/city seemed to be. Its understandable how downsizing it looked at as a failure, it’s just not a part of progress as we’ve come to know it. However, in the case of many rust-belt cities we’ve already “lost” they are ghosts of their former prosperous selves and the only way to move forward is to shrink them down to a manageable size.