Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ “During the Westward Expansion Native Americans were driven off their lands and their hunting grounds decimated by the government in league with vested interests. 150 years later the government and vested interests are still at it. Now they possess the accelerated ability to mask what’s being done. In municipal playbooks they’re calling it “planned shrinkage”. It’s a quick, inexpensive, and sanitary way cities can rid themselves of undesirable neighborhoods (and their people) without drawing attention.” Bradford Huey, East St. Louis
You’ve no doubt heard of “neighborhood revitalization”, but have you heard of “planned shrinkage” a covert method of taking over undesirable neighborhoods and turning them over to gentrification interests at dimes on the dollar? Planned shrinkage is an urban planning method which undermines a neighborhood and devalues its properties through the deliberate withdrawal of city services such as:
• Credible police patrol.
• Upkeep of streets and sidewalks.
• Having proper safety lighting available.
• Punctual trash and garbage collection.
• Having neighborhood parks and recreation centers available, staffed, and in good working order.
• Make sure emergency vehicles arrive in a reasonable time.
• Regular street cleaning.
• Keeping city property maintained.
• Feral dog and cat control.
• Shutting down “drug houses”.
• Making sure fire department calls are answered in a timely manner.
• Knocking down abandoned houses.
Planned shrinkage often takes place in poor, blighted, decaying, and high crime areas of a city. It’s employed to cope with a dwindling tax base. It leads to favoring elite neighborhoods with far better city services. Planned shrinkage is employed to effectively encourage the exodus of undesirable populations. It has demonstrated it’s workability in the South Bronx, New Orleans, and Detroit and countless smaller municipalities.
Can you think of a municipality in North Carolina where planned shrinkage is evident? Perhaps you noticed a city buying up distressed neighborhoods and remaking an entire neighborhood. Maybe you’ve noticed the lack of police patrol, safety streetlights, challenges with recreation centers, substandard trash pickups, a lack of sidewalks, unmaintained city properties, and an unattended city storm water runoff? Are residents allowed to abandoned their homes, driving prices even lower? Seems like a well thought out “plan” for coming in later and rescuing a neighborhood for dimes on the dollar for what housing is currently selling.
Clever. Maybe people living outside a planned shrinkage neighborhood will applaud its city leaders for their “visionary foresight. Perhaps pass out keys to the city at award ceremonies?
Planned shrinkage in the “Motor City”:
http://io9.com/5913561/detroit-plans-to-shrink-by-leaving-half-the-city-in-the-dark
Planned Shrinkage in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_shrinkage
Gentrify This: The Dark Side of Gentrification:
http://rowanfreepress.com/2012/11/22/gentrify-this-the-dark-side-of-gentrification/
