Smart Growth Around America

Abandoned Flint home; image courtesy NPR

Times are tough in Flint, Michigan. And truthfully, times have been tough for quite some time now.

Once home to General Motors and to more than 230,000 people, this rust-belt city has been losing residents for decades. The population of Flint today is nearly half of what it was at its height. As a result, 1 in 3 homes sit empty and each vacant property lowers the property value of every other occupied neighboring home.

No one exactly knows how to handle situations like this — there’s no real road map, precedent or guidelines. But Flint’s leaders and citizens are turning to some innovative ideas, highlighted in a piece by NPR.

“What we really need is a new map, literally a design of the city that looks at every block in every neighborhood, and then makes decisions about where it makes sense to either let nature take the land back or to create some intentional open green space,” Flint resident and Genesee County treasurer Dan Kildee said in the story. “So that 100,000 people can live in a city that does not look half-empty.”

Using a process known as landbanking, the city is working with residents to reshape vacant properties into spaces that improve life for the citizens that choose and want to remain in Flint. USA Today reports that in one block with seven abandoned homes and several more vacant lots:

neighbors have teamed up to mow the lawns and trim the shrubs at the homes and convert two of the vacant lots owned by the Genesee County Land Bank into a park and community garden.

“We’re trying to keep our neighborhood value up,” says Sue Graham, 54, who grew up in the neighborhood and bought her parents home in the 1980s.

Flint is also looking for ways to restore the population concentration found in the old neighborhoods — not only because infrastructure and public services are more expensive to provide in sparsely-populated neighborhoods — but because density helps support the restaurants, grocery stores, shops, and schools that neighborhood residents need for their daily lives.

In Flint, they won’t be regaining the 100,000 that lived there when they had a booming industrial base that could support the population. But what they can work for is a vibrant, healthy community for those that love and live in Flint.

No one knows exactly what the solution looks like and there is certainly no magic bullet. But doing nothing only guarantees that blight, vacancy and disinvestment will render more of the city dangerous and unlivable for the Flint residents who love their neighborhoods and call the city home.

Tags: Michigan, Vacant Property.
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