but just got around to posting on it. Short version: "We've effed up this city so bad, we ought to just turn a lot of it back into farmland."
"Things that were unthinkable are now becoming thinkable," said James W. Hughes, dean of the School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, who is among the urban experts watching the experiment with interest. "There is now a realization that past glories are never going to be recaptured. Some people probably don't accept that, but that is the reality."
Well, y'know, if you cleaned out the corrupt politicians, fired all the incompetent teachers and actually tried to, you could probably rebuild the city; but that would require actually doing something yourselves AND paying for it yourselves; much easier to beg the feds to rob other people to pay for this idiot idea.
Two things: first, from this guy,
My question is where are they going to put all the bricks, or the concrete from foundations and sidewalks? I've buried a lot of no longer used farm buildings and it's not an easy effort and that was way before today's environmental rules that won't allow you to just dig a hole, push the stuff in and then cover it up with a bulldozer, willy-nilly. Then once they get this junk cleared, what is going to be the remaining soil's organic matter content, or its profile? Will it even support a vegetable garden, let alone a field of something?
Second, the soil doesn't really matter: these clowns could, to borrow a saying, screw up a wet dream; even if the soil was good for growing they'd muck it up. And use that as an excuse to beg for more of other peoples' money to fix things. Again.