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State applies for federal demolition dollars, including $32.5 million for Flint and Genesee County
(date: 11/11/2009)
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Facing the Mortgage Crisis: The Greening of a City
(date: 11/10/2009)
ANN ARBOR, MI (Michigan Radio) - Joanne Palek and her brother, Richard, have lived on West Court Street in Flint for 10 years. A few years ago, the abandoned house next door burned down. So they bought the empty lot from the Genesee County Land Bank for exactly $1.00, and then they started to plant. By Jennifer Guerra, Michigan Radio | | |
Planners work on way to deal with Flint's declining population
(date: 11/10/2009)
Idea of using the vacant land for agricultural is growing GENESEE COUNTY (WJRT) -- (11/10/09)--While planners continue working on a way to deal with Flint's declining population, it appears the idea of using the vacant land for agricultural is growing. http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/local&id=7111087 | | |
Could Chevy in the Hole Become a recreation site?
(date: 10/28/2009)
FLINT (WJRT) -- It's a vision to reinvent an old property near downtown Flint. Imagine the Chevy in the Hole site as a state park or urban riverfront. Right now, the site is a bare slab of concrete spanning 100 acres near Kettering University. Efforts are being made by some University of Michigan-Flint students who want to revamp the property. By Kristen Abraham http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/local&id=7087674 | | |
Shrink to Survive? Rust Belt City Downsizes
(date: 10/28/2009)
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Flint, MI - On one side of the fertile lot stands an abandoned house, stripped long ago for scrap. On the other side, another abandoned house, windows boarded, structure sagging. And diagonally across the street, two more abandoned houses, including one blackened by a fire maybe a year ago, maybe two. But on this lot, surrounded by desertion in the north end of Flint, the toughest city in America, collard greens sprout in verdant surprise. Although the broccoli and turnips and snap peas have been picked, it is best to wait until deep autumn for the greens, says the garden’s keeper, Harry Ryan. The frost lends sweetness to the leaves. His is not just another tiny community garden growing from a gap in the urban asphalt. This one lot is really 10 contiguous lots where a row of houses once stood. On this spot, the house burned down. (“I was the one who called the fire department.”) On that spot, the house was lost to back taxes. (“An older guy; he was trying to fix it up, and he was struggling.”) Slide Showby Dan Barry, The New York Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/us/19land.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print | | |
ABC-12 Newsmaker: Flint's Shrinking Population
(date: 10/10/2009)
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Small Is Beautiful: The case for shrinking cities
(date: 10/10/2009)
by Dan KildeeThe quality of a city is determined by what life is like for the people who live there—not by how many people live there. So why is my suggestion that my hometown of Flint should shrink—reducing the “built” environment—creating such a stir? Is our American obsession with growth and expansion so pervasive that a community would rather fail at being large than succeed and become a smaller place? Flint is the birthplace of General Motors. It was once the center of the automotive universe, with a population of 200,000 and more than 80,000 people working for that one company. Flint exported cars and imported cash—and we thought that it would never end. The company town’s 1965 master plan, still the formal plan for the city, expected the population to grow to 250,000. But today, those GM jobs are nearly all gone; the population hovers at just over 100,000 and is falling. So, I have made a simple suggestion: that we redesign our city for the population that we actually have, not for the city we once were. Flint has lost 90,000 residents during the last 40 years, and those residents did not take their houses with them. Left behind is a city comprised of some vibrant neighborhoods, and some that are populated with empty houses, reminding the few residents still there that they live in a failed place. Click here for the full article: http://www.good.is/post/the-good-100-bulldozing-cities/
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FLINT, Michigan -- They came, they saw...and they ate the cherry tomatoes. More than 160 people showed up at the Flint Farmers' Market Tuesday night to pack a caravan of buses for a free tour of Flint's booming urban agriculture movement. Not even the organizers expected so much interest and enthusiasm for the first Edible Flint Food Garden Tour. by Elizabeth Shaw, The Flint Journal | | |
GENESEE TOWNSHIP, Mich. Teenagers in matching green T-shirts line up holding rakes and shovels, and take a karate stance. They've spent the day tending to neat rows of vegetables and feeding dozens of chickens. Others dug trenches for an irrigation system or hammered together a pen for goats, on a lot just outside the blighted city of Flint that only three years ago was a dumping ground. Getting young people involved in converting vacant urban spaces to grow food is a key part of neighborhood redevelopment efforts across the country. At the farm in Genesee Township, Jacky and Dora King have taken it a step further -- pairing farming and karate to teach similar lessons. By DAVID RUNK, Associated Press Writer Chicago Tribunehttp://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mi-flintkaratefarmer,0,7892409,print.story | | |
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