Nobody’s talking about bulldozing the West End just yet. But at a time when other shrinking cities are contemplating smaller geographic footprints to save money and resources, is this a talk that Pittsburgh and the Obama administration soon might have? Pittsburgh was one of several cities mentioned in a Daily Telegraph (U.K.) story published this month and headlined rather ominously, ‘U.S. Cities May Have To Be Bulldozed In Order To Survive.’ The story, which was picked up by the Drudge Report and soon after was bouncing around the Internet and talk radio, explored ‘a pioneering scheme’ that originated in Flint, Mich.: ‘Razing entire districts and returning the land to nature,’ thus right-sizing the city to meet the current population (114,000), not the population it once served (196,000). Dan Kildee, treasurer of Flint’s Genesee County, ‘outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, [and] has now been approached by the U.S. government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learned to the rest of the country,’ the Daily Telegraph story said. Pittsburgh was one of 50 downsizing candidates alleged to have been identified in a report published by the […]