The movement calls for communities to cordon off mostly vacant areas, cut them off from city services and let the land return to nature. It’s headed by Genesee County Land Bank Chairman Dan Kildee, who has drawn national attention for his efforts. As TWI noted recently, Kildee has been asked by the Obama administration and by a group of charities to explore the shrinking cities approach for other communities beyond Flint.

But urban ideas that play well on the national stage don’t always have the same reception closer to home, the Messenger says.

Businessman Dayne Walling and former state representative and current Genesee County Commissioner Brenda Clack, both Democrats, are facing off against one another in an August election. Both candidates recently expressed some doubts about the movement — and pressed for more details. Walling, for example, noted that there are thousands of houses that need to be torn down, “but we need to make sure that residents have every opportunity to weigh in on the process. Every neighborhood needs a unique solution.”

From the Messenger:

Clack called the shrinkage push a “political bullet,” adding that she is worried about residents who are low income or senior citizens living in properties that the land bank might have its eyes on being left out of a place to live.

“I don’t believe in removing people,” she said. “In some areas there are one or two abandoned homes on a block that need to be torn down, but we don’t even have the money to tear them down.”

Clack said that the shrinkage idea would “not be a top priority” for her if she was elected mayor.

“You re-pattern the city, you don’t shrink it,” she said.

Both candidates said they were concerned over the current lack of specifics regarding the shrinkage push.

“It’s partly controversial because not that much is known about it,” Walling said. “Right now it seems more like a catch phrase, not a plan.”

Former Flint Interim Mayor Michael Brown had jumpstarted the shrinking cities idea by suggesting in March that the city should cut off service to abandoned areas as a way to deal with blight.

Now that the shrinking cities idea is a movement, it could be something that sounds like a great idea — unless it happens to be your neighborhood that’s on the chopping block.

But it also may be an idea that’s going to pick up steam elsewhere. The Obama administration is seriously considering supporting the shrinking cities movement as a way to address economic decline,  reports the British newspaper, The Telegraph.

The Telegraph dubbed the idea a “shrink to survive” approach, and said it is being headed by a familiar name to TWI readers: Dan Kildee, founder and chairman of the Genesee County Land Bank in Flint. TWI profiled Kildee and his land bank last year. Land banks allow cities to acquire and reuse vacant and abandoned properties.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

The Telegraph has few other details on how this all is going to work. It’s also not clear how aggressively the Obama administration will embrace the idea. It’s true that in many ways, the shrinking cities movement is a “radical experiment,” as The Telegraph puts it. We are long accustomed in this country to the idea that only growth is good.

But the shrinking cities movement could quickly gain traction, despite its controversial nature. For all the towns and communities like Flint that have been smacked hard by the foreclosure crisis and are facing a deluge of abandoned and vacant properties, shrinking to survive soon may seem more like a smart move than a radical proposal.

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

John Russo, Oakland city attorney, said the city is gearing up to use California’s new foreclosure-blight law to force lenders to maintain their properties.

The $1,000-a-day fine “is a powerful tool for some tough and fair negotiations with banks,” he said. “The most important thing is to have banks understand that it’s not OK to treat foreclosed properties just like numbers on their ledgers; these are actual homes in the fabric of our neighborhoods. If banks have several properties on a block that they’re holding, waiting for the market to turn, maybe they need to hire security guards. That is their responsibility; it is their property.”

In Boston, city officials aggressively are going after banks, The Boston Herald reports:

City inspectors have slapped thousands of dollars in liens on 43 vacant or foreclosed properties blighting Hub neighborhoods to halt the national housing crisis from spreading more urban decay.

Among those being targeted are big banks, including Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo, who have ignored their responsibility to maintain the seized homes. The liens, totaling more than $67,000, reflect the cost to the Inspectional Services Department for boarding and securing the vacant properties, according to the agency.

“Pay up or we’re going to take your property,” said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who is fed up with big banks that continue to let their foreclosed properties languish and drive down Hub property values.

As Mike points out today, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) complained last week that banks have so much sway on Capitol Hill that they “frankly own the place.” That same attitude seems to hold true in neighborhoods scarred by bank-owned foreclosures. But with new anti-blight laws, it looks like those neighborhoods are beginning to fight back.