We have certain preconceptions when it comes to our cities. One is that a city should always be expanding; healthy cities should always be getting bigger and bigger, the argument goes. That might be true, but what about unhealthy cities hit hard by recent economic trends and the recession? Chana Joffe-Walt has the story of Youngstown, Ohio over at NPR’s Planet Money blog.
The town, originally built around the declining steel industry, had a population that was shrinking. The city leaders were desperate. Joffe-Walt lists the possible alternatives to the steel industry they were considering: car factory, NASCAR track, riverboat casino and, yes, blimp factory. In the end, the leadership decided on a much different path. City planner Bill D’Avignon explained “We needed as a city to recognize that we’re a smaller city .. We’re not going to grow; we’re never going to be the Youngstown we thought we were going to be.”
Hunter Morrison speaks about Shrinking Cities 03.12.10 from Neotropolis Producer on Vimeo.
So the plan was to start literally shrinking the city. They started demolishing thousands of abandoned houses and turning those plots into green space. The idea is that as the city shrinks, it will become more manageable, with less streets to pick up trash on and less miles for city buses to travel. Of course, one problem with this idea is that you don’t want to be the last person on your block. Mayor Jay Williams has tried to solve this by paying people to move from their current homes on abandoned streets to neighborhoods with denser populations, although there are several residents who refuse to move.
Is this a defeatist attitude? Should cities be instead looking at ways to stimulate their economies as opposed to admitting defeat and simply shrinking down? I don’t think so. According to the 2010 census, Youngstown has lost 18 percent of its population in the last decade. Sometimes you just have to be pragmatic; once the city saves some money on maintenance costs, then they can start investing it in other things to stimulate the local economy. Smaller, denser cities are just more efficient. Hopefully it’s a lesson that other declining Rust Belt cities can learn from.
Photo: Blue80, Wikimedia, CC
I wish my city would shrink.
I never did understand the desire for big cities. I much prefer smaller ones. I live in a city with ~80,000 people in it, and this is bigger than the last one I lived in. We have all the services we need, and many luxury services we don’t. We don’t really lack anything that the main centres have.