samhenderson quoted a recent article in the Grio about the mayor of Detroit giving up on streetlights for half of Detroit:Detroit Mayor Dave Bing announced a plan to eliminate nearly half of the city’s streetlights in an effort to move people to more densely populated areas of the city. As it currently stands, of the estimated 88,000 streetlights in Detroit, 40 percent of them are broken, meaning that many city neighborhoods are left in the dark.
Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But it's because of Detroit's radical depopulation. Consider these facts from later in the article:
Detroit, in terms of land area, is one of the largest cities in the country. At nearly 140 square miles, the city could fit Boston and San Francisco inside of its city limits and still have room to spare.
At its peak during the 1950s, Detroit was the fourth most populous city in the United States and all of that space was needed. However, Detroit’s population has plummeted since 1950, from nearly 2 million to just over 713,000 today . . . some neighborhoods are just 10 to 15 percent occupied.
Pretty post-apocalyptic, right? Street upon street of abandoned houses? Factories and workplaces with weeds gone to wildflowers and weeds? But it's reality.
Needless to say, the mayor's proposal is controversial, but it's a big problem, how to deal with with what one scholar calls "subtracted cities."
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