Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the city's Recreation Department have proposed that the city sell or in other ways get rid of 92 of the city's 310 parks to bring into scale the ratio of the city's population to parks. This is a tiny but significant step in the right direction to bring the city's total services package more in line with the city's dwindling population. Fifty years ago Detroit's population was nearly two million compared to today's 900,000. We no longer need 310 parks. In order to survive and thrive in the future, the leaders of the city and the region must find ways to make Detroit physically smaller so that it will be a better fit for a smaller population. At its current rate of population loss, Detroit will be home to about 600,000 people by 2025, and without any changes in it geographic boundaries, it will still contain 120 square miles, the same size as when it held twice as many people.
That the closed or sold parks might wind up as simply more vacant space in a city that is already 30 percent open space -- a result of commercial and residential abandonment -- troubles Talk About Detroit. If we don't make the city physically smaller, parts of it will soon look like the middle of Kansas. Leaders of today and the future must find ways to shrink Detroit.
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