Dan Kildee, a leader in the Shrinking Cities movement and the president of Community Progress, an advocacy group that is working to change the way government approaches cities in declines, has pioneered a land-banking system in his hometown of Flint, Mich. Today, Flint’s program is a model for other troubled cities looking to cope with their huge stock of abandoned homes.

Kildee talks to Alison Stewart about the need for a national agenda, the good that comes from demolishing houses and the mental shift Americans will need to make before they stop seeing downsizing as failure.(View full post to see video)

Related:

Youngstown, Ohio: the incredible shrinking city

In Youngstown, a house now abandoned was a home v” playersize=”512×288″]

In Michigan, a state hit hard by the recession, attempts to move away from a dependency on fossil fuels is seeing some success, but the proven and immediate economic impact of coal could negate the green gains that have recently been made.

Residents in California are protesting a plan for high-voltage power lines in the Northern part of the state.

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Click here, for more Blueprint America infrastructure headlines…

The New York Times reports, “In the first nine months of this year, some 130,000 Michigan residents who had lost their jobs remained out of work so long that they ran out of regular unemployment benefits. By the middle of this month, 63,000 people (who had already run out of their ordinary maximum benefit — as many as 26 weeks, at as much as $362 a week) also ran out of an extension authorized by Congress.”

Michigan’s economic crisis, compared to other states, has only been made worse by the failure of the auto industry.

As Congress and President-elect Obama consider bailing out the failing auto industry, other proposed stimulus measures look to put the unemployed back to work.

In Michigan, many of the state’s unemployed are hoping for just that. As old-style manufacturing jobs have been downsized or lost to workers overseas, American workers want to go back to school to be trained for technical, medical, green and infrastructure jobs.

But some 1.7 million Michigan residents, according to The New York Times, “have ‘basic skill challenges,’ like poor English or no high school diploma. As far as higher education, the state ranks 35th, below the national average, in college graduates.”

There is a workforce ready to work, in Michigan and certainly throughout the rest America, however that workforce, in addition to needing more job opportunities with livable wages, will need extensive training to be able to work in these new fields.