DETROIT, April 29 (UPI) -- Detroit Mayor Dave Bing fired an employee who had set forth a plan based on Bing's decision to decrease the city's size to fit its population, observers said.
Bing has said he wants to stabilize the city streets and has used the term "rightsizing" in his efforts, the Detroit Free Press reported Thursday.
Bing's communications team declined to say why the employee, Darchelle Strickland Love, was fired. But before she left Thursday, Strickland Love, who was assigned to perform special projects for the mayor's office, presented Bing with a copy of a proposal titled, "Neighborhood Stabilization & Reshaping," the Free Press said.
Strickland Love's plan includes using two Detroit neighborhoods in a pilot program to demolish vacant houses, clear garbage from lots, identify families to relocate from isolated blocks to denser neighborhoods, rehabilitate and occupy viable city-owned properties and tag home-improvement opportunities for existing homeowners.
Urban planners say they approve of plans to downsize into manageable areas and to use vacant land for city farms, which would be revolutionary for a large urban city, the Free Press reported.
Habitat for Humanity Detroit Executive Director Vincent Tilford said he was happy the MorningSide neighborhood was being considered as a pilot area in the program.
Habitat has invested approximately $7 million and built more than 60 houses in the area in the last three years, the newspaper said.
