Transit plan may be the doctor's orders for Detroit

The prescription for Detroit's fever may be a cocktail of a few different things. But it's clear in PBS's latest documentary, Blueprint America, which aired this week, that a healthy dose of mass transit will be a big portion of said cocktail.

Excerpt:

This new installment of PBS's "Blueprint America" project, Monday night on most stations, is about plans to revitalize Detroit by reviving its once thriving but now nearly nonexistent public transportation system (which was, of course, destroyed by the hometown auto industry). But despite all the earnest talk of light rail getting people back downtown, what lingers are the eerily quiet images of the former Motor City.

It's one thing to know that Detroit's population is half what it was in the 1950s. It's quite another to see the scruffy green acres within the city limits, block after block of what used to be neighborhoods and now are weed patches and incipient forests, devoid of people unless they've bedded down in the tall grass where we can’t see them.

As the city dissolves back into the landscape, analysts discuss the possibility of forcing the few still living in the empty zones to move into more densely populated areas so the city can cut back on utilities and police services. Others advocate large-scale urban farming.

Read the entire article here.

A clip from the documentary can be found here.