It's amazing that there are places like that in America. I would have never guessed if you had shown the pics without the captions. That said, what the city should do, is let demolition contractors go in there and let them demolish all of the buildings, and let them keep all the salvage. I'm sure between the concrete/brick and metal, there is enough in there for them to turn a profit. Put it out for competitive bid if you have to, but do it by whole city blocks, not just each individual structure. Once done, they can topsoil, grade it, seed it, and turn it into either nice open space for parks, or sell the land to developers to build nicer things there. All you have to do is get the taxes so high on it, that only the affluent can live there, and then you don't have the problem of poor people living there. Once the poor people are gone, there will be no more problems like this. I could take a fleet of excavators up there, crushers/grinders, and make a mint. I'm sure bureaucracy will stand in the way of anyone doing any such thing.
