“While logical, the potential for downsizing Detroit is limited because the city’s population didn’t flee from just one neighborhood; the departures were scattered, requiring Detroit to deliver services across a geographic area the size of Philadelphia, with less than half the population. Further cuts will surely come, but in some key areas, like public safety and blight removal, Detroit needs to spend more, not less.”
The scale of blight removal and overall “downsizing” needed in Detroit will require possible one-off extraordinary use of eminent domain granted by the state, and innovative financing solutions and partnerships with private developers and private investors.
Whole blocks, and in sum whole neighborhoods, will need to be turned into whole empty or ready-to-be-emptied blocks that could be sold as complete tracks for development.
The money to do that - if it is at all possible - will have to come from the private developers and investors (and/or their banks) with whom the city could partner - block by block, or neighborhood by neighborhood.
One thing the city could do to start that process would be to scrap its zoning ordances, forget any utopian “master plan” and let nothing but the willingness of a buyer, for whatever purpose, start getting city properties back into productive hands.
I hear that their are many in Detroit that actually receive money from the Gummint with out having to do a lick of work for it!