flint

The Michigan Messenger’s Todd Heywood ran the newest foreclosure numbers from a selection of Michigan counties and found some surprises. In Wayne County, home to Detroit, foreclosures were down substantially in May and June over the same period last year. But the real shocker was in Genesee County, where foreclosures were down by nearly 75 [...]

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 [...]

In Flint, Mich. and some other troubled communities fighting against an onslaught of abandoned and vacant properties, the latest survival tactic is to “shrink” the city. As we noted recently, the shrinking cities movement involves cutting off desolate areas from city services, urging anyone who still lives there to leave, and letting the land return [...]

Over at Hungry Hungry Hippos. they’ve taken me to task for my post Wednesday on efforts in Flint, Mich. to deal with abandoned and vacant properties by literally shrinking the size of their city — cordoning off the blight and leaving it behind. I had written that Flint and other cities facing overwhelming property abandonment [...]

The New York Times gives high-profile treatment today to efforts in Flint, Mich. to deal with a deluge of abandoned and vacant properties by literally shrinking the city — demolishing the houses, urging people to leave, cordoning off the decay and leaving it to nature. The Times focuses on Genesee County Treasurer and Land Bank [...]

The tent cities in Sacramento, Calif., which we described recently, and the increasing number of shanty towns detailed in The New York Times today, are only part of the crisis in America’s cities. As we’ve written, vacant and abandoned foreclosed homes in some communities have become a bigger problem than new foreclosures themselves. The vacant [...]

FLINT, Mich. — Sen. Barack Obama laced into his Republican rival at a Michigan community college on Monday, blasting the McCain Campaign’s famous “Straight Talk Express” as more like a “No Change Express.”
It is the first time Obama has used that line, which was well received by the union-heavy crowd of more than 300 people, [...]

CHICAGO, IL — On the first official day of the general election homestretch, Sen. Barack Obama is rushing to address the latest economic news, as the government bails out the mortgage giants. He is probably also looking to counter The St. Paul Bounce — which is powering the Republican ticket’s largest national lead in eight [...]