Restoring Prosperity
The Greater Ohio Policy Center Blog
shrinking cities reading series
In her book Small, Gritty, and Green, Catherine Tumber makes an argument for the value of small older-industrial cities in a low-carbon future. Tumber aligns smaller cities’ sizes, industrial pasts, and proximity to agriculture with broader societal needs she prescribes for a less fossil-fuel dependent future.
Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown by Sean Safford is a commonly cited work on struggling cities, particularly smaller ones. Unlike the other work profiled so far, Safford deals less directly with issues of vacant land but examines how civic capacity and social networks can influence a city’s path. Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown compares the trajectory of two very similar Rust Belt cities – Allentown, Pennsylvania and Youngstown, Ohio – and examines why Allentown has been more successful in rebounding from economic decline and adapting to the 21st Century economy. Both cities experienced significant crises as their primary economic engine – the steel industry – retooled in the 1970s, resulting in fewer local jobs and the eventual dissolution of each city’s key local company. Despite these challenges, Allentown has recently experienced economic and population regrowth while Youngstown has still largely not rebounded from the crisis of 40 years ago.
Terra Incognita, published by Ann Bowman and Michael Pagano in 2004, was one of the first academic works focused on the factors that influence how local governments interact with vacant land. The authors take a broad view of what constitutes vacant land – ranging from abandoned housing or industrial sites to greenspace, and seek to move beyond the perception that vacancy is always negative for a city. The authors use survey data and interviews to understand how cities with different tax structures, social systems, and economic development needs perceive and utilize vacant land.
In his book Design After Decline, author Brent Ryan explores the historic role of urban and architectural design in combating (or accelerating) decline in cities and explores how good design can help shrinking cities boost quality of life for residents. Design After Decline argues that shrinking cities may not be able to reverse decline, but they can make cities more equitable for residents living in them.
By Torey Hollingsworth, GOPC Manager of Research and PolicyMany of GOPC’s followers are likely familiar with the concept of “shrinking cities” – communities that have experienced significant population decline and property abandonment over a period of decades. But what exactly this term means – and the feelings it can provoke – varies from person to person and community to community.
A few cities, including some in Ohio, have decided to embrace the concept of shrinking and are refocusing their planning efforts on how to “right-size” the city’s infrastructure for a smaller population. Others, also in Ohio, have rejected the idea and are implementing strategies to regrow their populations. Neither choice is necessarily right or wrong, but the question of how to deal with substantial population decline is one that most of Ohio’s legacy cities will have to answer.
While “shrinking cities” as a concept is still relatively new in the United States, academics and urban planners have started to explore the question of how U.S. cities can manage population decline. As part of a literature study led by Dr. Mattijs Van Maasakkers at The Ohio State University, Torey Hollingsworth, GOPC’s Manager of Research & Policy, read a series of academic books and articles exploring the complex questions surrounding shrinking cities. Because the issues arising in shrinking cities align closely with GOPC’s mission of urban revitalization and sustainable growth, we will be launching a new blog series that summarizes some of the books and articles that were the most interesting or relevant in Ohio.
A key theme that runs throughout much of the literature on shrinking cities is a re-examination of the concept of growth. Can a city “grow” even if it is shrinking? Are there opportunities to create greater prosperity and opportunity for residents even in the face of population decline? These are important questions for people who work in or care about cities with declining populations. We hope that these summaries provoke even more questions and raise some ideas for paths forward.
We will be posting these summaries over a series of weeks. If there’s a book, article, or other work about shrinking cities that you’ve found useful or interesting and want to see covered – please let us know.
This article is part of a blog series exploring books and articles written about shrinking cities, or communities that are losing population and dealing with housing vacancy and abandonment. For more information on this series, see the first post “Reading Series on Shrinking Cities”. These summaries are provided only for educational purposes and opinions expressed in these summaries do not necessarily reflect those of Greater Ohio Policy Center.
