Good point, 4arch.

Two comments: the Mayor of Naptown announced yesterday the City's plan to partake in "shrinking cities" by knocking down 2500 houses in the next ten years. The City actually has a pretty good plan for how to identify "key" houses that need to go by working with neighborhood associations. When even the Republican mayor of a Midwestern town is talking about "urban gardens", you know there's serious buzz!

And, on the topic of "key" houses, I'll point to a different strategy: University of Pennsylvania saw great success with a program in which they identified which houses in distressed West Philly (by campus) were key for rehab: architecturally significant, the best house on a block, etc. The U then rehabbed these houses and sold them at a loss to people who were required to be Owner-Occupants. The West Philly neighborhood, in part due to this initiative, turned around pretty quickly.

i disagree...there is a lot of overweight people in michigan and i think the cupcake seller would do very well in flint.

Flint can bulldoze half the town but the problem still remains. We can argue the merits of what to do with the currently vacant parcels of the city also must work to correct the current conditions which continue to shrink the city.

For a comparison I looked at Sioux Falls, SD. They have a similar population as Flint, are both isolated from major metro areas, both situated in flat "boring" plains and both with similar climates.

The difference is that Sioux Falls is a booming city while Flint is, well, a shit hole. The big difference is that South Dakota has no state corporate or personal income tax and is a right to work/open shop state with little to no union influence. That correlates into Sioux Falls having the lowest unemployment rate in the nation and a much higher per capita income level than that of Flint. So while manufacturing is leaving places like Flint it's going to places like Sioux Falls.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to live in Sioux Falls any more than I'd want to live in Flint, but we can argue all day long about how to "remake" Flint and none of it will be worth a damn unless Flint makes the changes to attrack business back to the city. Obviously Sioux Falls has an environment that attracts businesses to a city the size of Flint. It can be done...however in the Michigan political environment I have my doubts.

puddles: Chief Architect of Michigan-based Taunting.

i think those are good points...there are other issues to confront though. racism, even of the subconscious, unintended sort can inhibit people from moving back into a city. it may be difficult to admit, but when we talk about bringing people from the suburbs back into the city, we are often talking about at least a perception among white suburbanites of bringing white people back to the city. building new homes alone isn't always going to bring people "back in," especially in places like flint. of course there are suburban black neighborhoods, there are suburban mixed neighborhoods, there are urban white neighborhoods. but the gestalt of surburbia is still usually a white phenomenon, and a lot of these people, especially of the child bearing age, unfortunately aren't going to be willing to moving themselves into what they would call an "inner city" (i.e. what they perceive to be black) school district. so what do you do about that? even in chicago, the vast majority of white people i know send their kids to private schools, because they don't want their children mingling with "inner city kids." there's a perception that city schools aren't as good. michigan's schools are more or less funded by meap test scores, and suburban schools usually test higher, so how do you get people to want to move to the city? personally, i think we focus enough on empty nesters and 20 somethings. suburbanites, be they black or white or whatever, who are having kids need to move to the city to help create a new generation of urban dwellers. michigan's cities are some of the most segregated in the country, and school district lines were originally drawn for the purpose of keeping people segregated. to build a viable, sustainable, urban culture in the rustbelt (or anywhere i would imagine) involves seriously rethinking the relationships between different races, different economic classes, different cultures. urban dwellers are already much better at this than suburbanites; most suburbanites i know quiver at the thought.

i can't believe no one has a take on what i just posted. jfidler is out of town, that i do know.

sorry to say...but most folks that grow up in the 'inner city' try to get out for a reason or more. between vandalism, crime, drugs, lack of jobs, i don't think most folks would take that chance of moving inside those lines.

Technically 80 grit... that has little to do with actual occurrence. Well rather level of incidence versus visibility.

There are plenty of nice, rich and mostly "white" cities in California and Florida that have a higher incidence of crime than most major urban areas. In fact-- Miami, Orlando, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Fransisco (including Oakland) have incredible high crime rates.

Visitors to these cities, Orlando and Miami, often do not realize they are in areas with crimes competitive to say Flint, Compton or Baltimore [actually, I do believe Orlando has been continually beating out Compton for a while].

But what would be worth noting and building on what le bossman says above... is that in areas like Miami and Orlando there is a more passive racism. You don't see the crime because you are physically separated from it.

Orlando is probably one of the most visited cities in the United States and very few ever venture outside a pre-determined itinerary. In fact, almost everyone who believes they are visiting Orlando actually really never steps foot in it. A larger portion isn't even in the same county half the time.

Suburbia has never really lived up to its claims. It doesn't necessarily solve crime. It masks it. So, those "getting out of the inner city" are contributing to the problem they're avoiding.

Very rarely does a crime happen on a busy street.

as for crime are we talking per population or per occurance. don't forget that alot of inner city crimes are not reported or are just flaked off. we can also talk about different levels of crime steaming from stolen items/drugs/murder/misdemeanors/etc...

one of the only ways to get families to move back to inner cities is to provide decent schooling for the kids and drop the crime rate.

The only way to get decent schooling and lower crime rates is by increasing the tax basin and the only way to increase the tax basin is by getting more affluent families to move back to the city.

Of course, this rarely works because wealthier families will put their children in private schools and demand lower real estate taxes.

I was referring to per capita crime rates. The Bronx or Harlem is technically safer than say... Ft. Lauderdale. The difference is the stigma behind the two... "people" actually want to live in Ft. Lauderdale. That's also to say there's probably even less crimes reported in the suburbs due to visibility.

Theft, drug-related crimes and certain misdemeanors are actually higher in suburbia. Not to mention, white-collar crimes and crimes of depravity (rape, pedophilia, serial murder, mass murder et cetera) are actually higher in suburbia.

There's not much in criminology yet in terms of research but there's a very strong correlation between levels of privacy and certain kinds of crime. Now, it's whether or not those with predispositions prefer one environment over the other or whether environment causes disposition.

Furthermore, the issue of violence is heavily confounded by slavery-- to go even further, a lot of the way we currently view history is often revisionist relatively to the Antebellum. Our belief of a brutal, merciless past is often at ends with actuality. So, we're in a constant and consistent cycle of violence that we have yet to break.

And this isn't a tolerance and be nice issue, this is becoming essentially breed into our society.

Do you have some references to back this up? Not that I don't believe you but for things like theft and drug crimes I'm skeptical.

The problem with crime in any city is there are good places and bad places. Chicago for example, the north side is relatively safe while the south side is a different story. Same goes for different suburban villages, some are better than others when it comes to crime.

That said, on average suburbs that operate their own police departments typically have far more officers per captia than core cities do. Shorter response times and increased police presence do make a difference.

In my particular "streetcar suburb" the racial mix is still mostly white but a good 25-35% of the population is black and hispanic. Most of my newer neighbors are in fact minorities that have left the inner city, much like the white people that originally built the suburb in the 1940's-50's. When asking why they left the city the unanamous response is "crime."

While in the suburbs there is teenage hoolaginism, petty theft and vandalism there aren't the hard core crimes that people fear. We haven't had a homocide in years ~ mid 90's I believe. Gang activity is nil. Violent crime is unheard of. These are still huge selling points. Any city, Flint included, needs to clean up the crime before attracting anyone.

my whole point about flint and cities in general was not that there is crime, but that there is a perception of crime. sure, there are some rough neighborhoods in the city that have problems with gangs and drugs, but downtown flint itself and a few of its surrounding neighborhoods are relatively quiet. it's perfectly feasible to walk around the city in flint, even after dark, and not have to worry about getting raped or mugged. from people i interviewed, most of the crimes in the city in flint are not violent crimes. there's maybe some graffiti tagging, someone might try to break into your car looking for money. the exact same things happen in downtown bozeman, montana everyday. downtown flint itself isn't even much of a city, it is basically a cobblestone, one street deal and looks like anytown main street.

Here is probably the most recent written article on the subject from a decent source:

http://www.miller-mccune.com/business_economics/the-slumming-of-suburbia-994

It deals more with a recent issue.

Here's a one of many papers, also instructions on how to set up GIS studies, that says what I was saying... http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc00/professional/papers/pap508/p508.htm

There is no statistical correlation between density and crime. There is a significant correlation between poverty and crime. If you have substantial isolated poor people, whether they are single-family homes or high-rises, there will be crime.

Over the past twenty years poverty has been dramatically dropping in most high-density areas and so has crime.

Now, if you count every single crime as a crime, then statistically suburbs have more crime on the basis that a) more people live in them and b) the crime may not always be serious. But crime is crime.

Oh, I will totally admit that living next to a grow house is a hell of a lot better than living next to a meth lab. And moreso, the reason I brought this up was that the perception of crime needs to change if we want urban areas to become more approachable to the everyday person.

It's just one of the things that grinds my gears... well that and people saying you can't raise a family in a city.

Orochi - Interesting article. There is no doubt that the recent history of foreclosure and over built suburbs will play a role in crime statistics down the road. Additionally I do agree that density does not automatically equal crime. Somewhere I read that of America's metro/urban populations as much as 70% live in suburbs. When more than 2/3 of people are in the burbs there obviously will be crime there.

I do take issue with the dramatic drop in crime in cities. Yes, there has been a gentrification of the downtown area in many cities with the expansion of urban condos, etc. However the same hasn't happened for the most blighted and poor areas of those same cities. Pocketed communities in major cities have seen some growth and rebirth but there are still large urban poor populations with high crime, etc. Over the past 20 years the suburbs have remained the biggest draw far out weighing the population that has returned to the city.

You're right that perception of crime is probably worse than actual crime. Still, it's an obstacle that can't be easily changed, especially when driving through a "bad" neighborhood you see unkept houses and people seemingly loitering around. I'm just not buying the thesis that everyone is flooding back into the city because they hate their commute, etc. I just haven't seen it outside of empty nesters and dink's buying urban condos.

Perception of inner city crime is driven primarily by local news organizations and the bias against urban areas in their crime reporting is off the charts.

I actually live and work in Flint and can say, in the general sense, you're all wrong (liberty bell especially so) and all right (le bossman--or at least his grad student--especially so).

I could spend the next 2 years going off on all these points but this is an old mostly dead topic anyway...

Jeez, driftwood, way to cut and run!

What exactly am I wrong about?

OH! Almost forgot...

The cupcake guy might very well get beat up, but there's a good chance that he'd do pretty well if he sets up shop next to our local crepe stand!