Where zombies and urban renewal collide

What to do with all the derelict buildings and brownfields in America’s shrinking Rust Belt cities?  One entrepreneur wants to create a “zombie themed experience park” in a dilapidated section of Detroit.  Here’s more information about the project.

As someone who has worked in community development, I think this is an interesting option. Certainly, it would mean local residents allowing that their city has sunk so low as to approach a “zombie apocalypse wasteland” level of decay (which many folks will show no alacrity to do).  However, I think it’s certainly a tamer option than, say, casino gambling, which many foundering cities are apparently ready to try.  A zombie amusement park would create jobs and bring tourists to the city.  And while it wouldn’t “improve” the neighborhood in the sense of new construction or renovation, it would cast the wretched neglect already present in a new light (just as something “worn out and old” can be recast as “antique and historical”).  The decades of disinvestment and rot would suddenly go from a liability to an asset. . .in one transformative swoop of zombification.

An interesting idea.