Seeing as
Detroit is basically abandoned as it is, the city is planning to cut power to half the grid and consolidate its public services (bus, police, etc.) into the most populated parts of the city that remain.
In 2010, Bing began a project called Detroit Works, which is examining ways to reorganize and reconfigure Detroit. It seems one part of that reorganization is encouraging residents and businesses in more sparsely populated areas into more populated areas by reducing the number of streetlights from 88,000 to 46,000. That will leave 713,000 residents in the dark in an area larger than Boston, Buffalo, and San Francisco combined.
Twenty Detroit neighborhoods are only 10 to 15 percent occupied, and the government can't force residents to leave their homes, and Michigan law makes it difficult for the government to seize them under eminent domain. So the government is instead "phasing out" these neighborhoods by turning off their streetlights; or, in many cases, just leaving them off. (Forty percent of Detroit's streetlights are currently broken.) Bing hopes the cash-strapped city can focus its bus and police services on the still-lit, more population-concentrated areas of the city.
I'm torn on what to think on this issue. On one hand, it's really dickish to cut power to half the city and not help relocate the affected population. On the other, Detroit's been going downhill for a while now, and this kind of cost cutting would need to happen eventually.
Personally, I think this is an opportunity. Imagine what could be done with a city that needs a major infrastructure overhaul and revitalization. Get the right people interested, and Detroit strikes me as a great place to develop and test new technologies. Sustainable energy, cheap & efficient building techniques, thousands of jobs in construction, engineering, and all the things that go in to developing and (re)building a city from the ground up. As long as nobody wants the land, it's going to be dirt cheap for any interested party to buy up and get started on such a project.
And yes, I realize all that's a bit of a pipe dream, but the possibilities here seem endless with the right drive and ambition.