Hatchet or scalpel?

From the intertubes today I learn of new Detroit Mayor Cockrel’s plan to implement selective demolition of Detroit’s vacant and foreclosed housing stock to remove the proverbial “blighted and abandoned structures". According to the Free Press, about half of a $47 million federal grant for assistance with the foreclosure crisis will be used to bulldoze more of Detroit’s housing stock. $8 million is set aside for “rehabilitating foreclosed homes” and $4 million for new construction. I don’t like these proportions.

A non-sinister vacant house waits for tomorrow.

Our President-elect, in last month’s debates, talked convincingly about using a scalpel instead of a hatchet in the implementation of government policy. Are we taking the same approach to our urban fabric here in Detroit? Obviously there are a lot of vacant structures that are in perilous condition that need to be taken down. But, in the process, will we see solid, fixable houses with fine details swept away merely because they sit empty? And what is the process for deciding on this house or that? The Planning and Development Department have carefully selected neighborhoods that are “nearing the tipping point” towards “long-term decline", but is there a house-by-house survey underway by trained preservationists, or is it up to the buildings department to condemn based only on a technical evaluation?

We can’t save them all. I know well enough the sinister pall that many of these structures cast over the health, safety, and security of struggling neighborhoods. And I know many of them are stripped bare. But we should be able to save some of them, to serve as historical and architectural anchors for the reinvigorated communities of the future. I’m hopeful this is the intent of the $8 million set aside for rehabilitation, and even more hopeful that there is a process in place before the bulldozers rush out into the neighborhoods again. But after so much experience with misdirected (and simply undirected) demolition in Detroit, its sad to see the greater pot of money dedicated to more of the same.

Demolishing a house employs three people for one day; renovating a house employs dozens of people for months.