Will the Phoenix fly over Michigan?

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Amid the fallout from the worst recession since the Great Depression, we're seeing evidence of that old adage played-out in varying degrees all around us. Here in Michigan, it's particularly apparent in Flint where a friend of mine is the head of the emergency department at Hurley Medical Center. He was the first to describe to me the dire decay of entire neighborhoods inside Flint and that city's unprecedented efforts to combat the degradation.

He painted a bleak picture punctuated by the grim reality—block after block of abandoned foreclosure homes stripped by vandals of any residual value. Its devastation, ground-zero, where some neighborhoods might only have one or two families left in residence. He said the city finally decided to cut services to these areas and is now actively razing entire districts, returning the land to nature.

The decay of our urban centers isn't unique to Flint. Here in the "rust belt," it has been fairly widespread and part of a decades-long decline as suburbs blossomed. Although more aesthetically pleasant yet logistically disadvantaged, just getting to work from the 'burbs often involves a long, twice-daily commute on congested highways that has become standard operating procedure, a way of life for many people directly or indirectly employed by the auto industry.

Now, I have to wonder if we're about to see a reversal in this trend. We're already noting the decline of the shopping mall, the darling the 1970's spending experience and an iconic fixture on the suburban landscape. As the new global "gold standard,"oil prices seem destined to soar once more. The cost of fuel for our cars during the coming years is a very real concern. Will we begin to reconsider our decision to populate the outskirts of town, so far from the centers for employment, sporting events, health care, the arts and education?

If cities, like Flint, reclaim the land, refurbish crumbling infrastructure in aging urban centers and consolidate potential in a more attractive setting, will we eventually see a mass migration inward? Will we rediscover the splash of color the farmer's market brings to the cityscape? Will our cars languish at the curb as we bicycle to amenities offered in each of our unique neighborhoods? As razing cleanses as it cauterizes, will Flint rise, like a phoenix, from its ashes?

In that eventuality, will we be left, instead, with deeply-depreciating home values in the once-trendy hinterland, now deemed too far to warrant the cost of the commute? Or will we diversify our employment opportunities, create new industries that can sustain the vitality and viability of both worlds?

There's no real purpose to this post written on a quiet Sunday morning, over three hours' drive north of Flint and its desperate struggle to survive... just thinking out loud and trying to envision a happy ending to the story.

— Gee Vee