Contracting cities need to find ideal size
Author: Dermot FinchDate: 04/05/2010
Publication: Regeneration and Renewal
Urban populations can go down as well as up, just like house prices and shares. Few city leaders want their population to shrink - but sometimes a city has to confront the reality of shrinkage, and how to manage it.
I was in Washington DC last month, to find out more about "right-sizing"- an emerging trend in US urban development. It's a strategy for cities whose populations have shrunk over the past few decades - most commonly, Rust Belt cities such as Cleveland and Youngstown in Ohio, and Detroit and Flint in Michigan.
These "shrinking cities" are the losers from globalisation. Their steel and car industries have been declining for years. Thousands of homes have been vacated, most recently triggered by the crisis of sub-prime mortgage foreclosures. Cleveland fell from 915,000 residents in 1950 to 478,000 in 2000. Between 1970 and 2005, Flint dropped from 190,000 to 120,000.
Yet despite shrinking cities having been a reality for decades, right-sizing has only just begun. Initially the focus of a few academics at the University of California (Berkeley) and Cleveland's Urban Design Collaborative, right-sizing has now been picked up by the media and is being taken seriously by some city leaders - but it is very contentious with many city and community leaders, as it flies in the face of the American Dream.
Cities that have lost population share a common problem: too much space. Detroit's hollowed-out inner city and suburban sprawl mean that housing, education, health and emergency services are now too dispersed across the city. Such shrinking cities need to readjust their physical footprint to fit their smaller populations. They are doing this through a combination of selective demolition, greening over vacant land and small business development - to avoid over-reliance on single large employers.
Youngstown, between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, is a classic Rust Belt town. Its population fell from 140,000 in 1970 to 80,000 in 2005. In the 1980s and 1990s, it and similar cities struggled in vain to revive their declining steel industry and reverse population loss. Copycat "build and they will come" recovery strategies sank without trace.
More recently, Youngstown started to embrace a different strategy, based not on indefinite growth but on adapting to a smaller population. In 2005, newly-elected Youngstown mayor Jay Williams concluded: "We have to embrace the fact that there is no going back to where we were. But being smaller can also be better." That's a brave statement for a local leader to make, but the right one.
Before taking office, Williams led the revision of the town's land use masterplan. Through extensive public engagement, and with input from the local university and local firms, the town agreed that it was not going to grow. James Cossler, CEO of the town's small business incubator, said this year: "We're not going back to where we were. We've had to embrace the fact that we are going to be a smaller city."
Youngstown has taken the lead on right-sizing. Flint is also taking control of its own "planned shrinkage" through a local land bank that is being used to take ownership of foreclosed properties, and consolidate the city into a more viable area. Meanwhile, Cleveland has accepted that it will not recover its population loss, and has instead adopted a comprehensive greening strategy that aims to redeploy mass expanses of vacant land.
Right-sizing is tough politically. Cities such as Buffalo are in denial about their shrinkage and have yet to grasp the need to downsize their physical size. Even mayor Williams is finding it hard to implement his vision. Meanwhile, the Obama administration prefers to talk about "cities in transition" and has set up a task force to support "auto communities", but is avoiding explicitly endorsing the downsizing of struggling cities.
What can we learn from all this? We certainly have our share of shrinking cities: Liverpool's population fell from 768,000 in 1951 to 439,000 in 2001; and Manchester shrank at the same rate, from 692,000 to 393,000. And we still need to transform areas of abandoned housing, such as in Anfield in Liverpool. But labour mobility is much higher in the US, and the scale of housing abandonment much bigger. Town centre planning, brownfield rules and local taxation are also very different.
Three lessons stand out. First, not every UK city will grow at or above the national average. Struggling cities such as Hull and Stoke need to be realistic about that, and avoid copycat growth strategies. Second, like Youngstown, our struggling cities need to articulate and own their own recovery plan. And third, local leadership is vital: difficult and brave decisions will be required by city leaders during this protracted recovery.
A version of this article first appeared in Regeneration and Renewal.
