Embracing Shrinkage
Any Seinfeld fans out there? Yes? Well then you know about the physics surrounding the term “shrinkage”.
It seems that there are quite a few communities out there who are actually embracing the idea of shrinkage. Detroit,Michigan and Youngstown, Ohio are among the new breed of rust-belt cities who are beginning to understand that Bigger isn’t always Better.
Could Windsor possibly have the wisdom to do the same?
(thanks to my effervescent net-surfing buddy Urbanrat for forwarding these articles)
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Windsor has wisdom? I thought it was just full of ego’s and agenda’s?
Because Windsor is so far behind the times and so far behind what other cities do I am absolutely positive that we will continue with sprawl unabated for the next 10 years before the city realizes it’s mistakes.
It will be up to Scaledown and the rest of us to insure that this doesn’t happen.
Flying back to Windsor a couple of years ago, the flight attendant came on the PA system and announced that we will be landing in Windsor in thirty minutes, can we please adjust our clocks and watches and set them back ten years!
ME, is right, and others over the years have pointed this out also, that Windsor seems always to be the last city in North America to make changes, to stay current with popular levels of thinking in anything. Windsor, as Gord Henderson pointed out in last Saturday’s column, that coming into Windsor is just butt ugly but Gord, Windsor has always been noted for its gas station architecture! And all the new subdivisions in Windsor, look like anyother place in North America, the entrails or dregs of architectural design, developer laziness and consumers haplesness indifference in asking or demanidng something better.
As to shrinkage, it will happen here, the auto industry isn’t done leaving Windsor yet, and it appears that contract negoitations for the Big Three this fall aren’t going to be good either for employment in Windsor or Ontario.With the feeder industries to the once big three also disappearing, the abondonment affect will continue. Then retail, then…
Expect to see more houses for sale, foreclosures or just walk-aways appearing, because anybody left in Windsor won’t be able to afford them. With no big buck paying industries ever coming this way again, Windsor’s empty housing stock will just grow, and this city will have to deal with it. So maybe the mayor can fly down to Youngstown and get some ideas there for a smaller city or just call Kwame!