blight

Our sister site, The Michigan Messenger, points out that the shrinking cities movement – an urban development approach that has drawn national attention to Flint, Mich. — is becoming an issue in the local mayoral race.
The movement calls for communities to cordon off mostly vacant areas, cut them off from city services and let the [...]

For a while now at TWI, we’ve been keeping and eye on developments in the shrinking cities movement. It’s a new idea for urban development, aimed at saving cities by making them smaller: Cordoning off the sections that are abandoned and marred by blight, urging the few people left to move, and letting the land [...]

Calculated Risk has an excellent roundup today of local efforts to fight vacancies and blight caused by banks that abandon their foreclosed homes. Cities and neighborhoods increasingly are using local ordinance laws to require lenders to register their vacant properties and to keep them from falling into disrepair. California has led with way with anti-blight [...]