How America's Shrinking Cities Can 'Rightsize'

[M II A II R II K]

How America's Shrinking Cities Can 'Rightsize'


13 Feb 2020

By Matt Krupnick

Read More: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ties-rightsize

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Although most US cities in that predicament have gone to great lengths to avoid admitting shrinkage publicly, with many branding themselves as “legacy cities”, some have taken innovative steps to accept the new reality: that they will never return to their former glory and need to adapt to their smaller size. “We cannot go back to where we were,” said Ivonne Audirac, an associate professor of planning and landscape architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington who has studied shrinking cities. “Let’s accept that.”

- Some cities have turned to “rightsizing”, or shifting their focus from returning to their historical peak and instead toward improving life for the remaining residents. Sometimes that means turning to drastic measures, such as eliminating services to largely empty neighborhoods or demolishing thousands of buildings. Those decisions are fraught with racial and class considerations, making it difficult to find consensus among decision-makers. “You can do a lot of things, but you need local buy-in,” said Daniel Campo, an associate professor and program director of city and regional planning at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

A handful of cities have had some success achieving that achieved that buy-in:

• Tear down empty houses: The newly emptied lots have given Baltimore options. Some are turned into community gardens or parks, while others have given the city the opportunity to build new neighborhoods. Take Johnston Square, home to the city jail and one of Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods. The city hopes to stem its decline through such projects. Where you are able to attract these millennials, you will be able to sustain your population.

• Attract tourists: While Baltimore has focused on essentially redesigning its city to adapt to the smaller population, New Bedford has relied partly on marketing and partly on development to brand itself as a quaint, attractive New England fishing town. The city has mixed its redevelopment strategies with its quest to become a tourist destination. That marketing follows years of adapting to a dramatically changed economy. The city tore down some of the old textile mills that lined its waterfront, making the district more pedestrian-friendly while maintaining the practical side of the nation’s most profitable fishing port. Other mills have been turned into artist studios.

• More open space: Once one of the nation’s steel capitals, Youngstown lost the entire industry within a few years in the 1970s. The population plummeted, leaving behind vacant property and rising crime rates. In 2005, desperate to find a way out of the quagmire, city leaders adopted the Youngstown 2010 plan, which provided a path to rethinking Youngstown as a more vibrant smaller city rather than an empty big one. The plan described Youngstown as “a size 40 man wearing a size 60 suit”. The blueprint envisioned more open space, less land devoted to factories and housing, and better use of the Mahoning River waterfront.

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[Yuri]

I read the article and I just worried about what kind of things they are demolishing, specially in Baltimore where the decline was not as bad as Detroit, Cleveland or St. Louis. If they get rid of historic buildings, that might hurt the city ahead.

[M II A II R II K]

Unlike other countries in Europe or Japan the immigration rich countries will fare better with the excess of baby boomers to pay for and a decline in population.

Maybe the US can have a second tier version of legal immigration where the green cards for employment would only be valid in declining cities, so that would populate and invigorate declining cities, and don't talk about taking jobs because more people equals more customers.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I read the article and I just worried about what kind of things they are demolishing, specially in Baltimore where the decline was not as bad as Detroit, Cleveland or St. Louis. If they get rid of historic buildings, that might hurt the city ahead.

Uhh Baltimore is in rapid continued decline right now, they're having the biggest losses and spikes in crime in decades. Meanwhile all those other cities you mentioned have showed slowed losses, rapid central core growth and are likely to see city proper gains in the 2020's.

Baltimore shows no signs of growing any time soon and with many blocks of abandoned row houses I'm not sure what you expect them to do.

[Steely Dan]

^ is baltimore really doing a lot worse than those other cities?

population decline so far this decade wouldn't indicate that it is.


city: 2010 pop. - 2018 pop. (% loss)

detroit: 713,777 - 672,662 (-5.8%)

st. louis: 319,294 - 302,838 (-5.2%)

cleveland: 396,698 - 383,793 (-3.3%)

baltimore: 620,961 - 602,495 (-3.0%)

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by The North One

Uhh Baltimore is in rapid continued decline right now, they're having the biggest losses and spikes in crime in decades. Meanwhile all those other cities you mentioned have showed slowed losses, rapid central core growth and are likely to see city proper gains in the 2020's.

Baltimore shows no signs of growing any time soon and with many blocks of abandoned row houses I'm not sure what you expect them to do.

I meant compared to the peak as it was this time their historical house stock was built. I didn’t check the numbers, but from the top of my head, Baltimore lost 1/3 of its inh. compared to 2/3 of Detroit and St. Louis or 1/2 of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or Buffalo.

I’d guess they also have a better house stock, brick, compared to the wooden Detroit, Cleveland or St. Louis, where it might be more challenging to preserve them.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I meant compared to the peak as it was this time their historical house stock was built. I didn’t check the numbers, but from the top of my head, Baltimore lost 1/3 of its inh. compared to 2/3 of Detroit and St. Louis or 1/2 of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or Buffalo.

I’d guess they also have a better house stock, brick, compared to the wooden Detroit, Cleveland or St. Louis, where it might be more challenging to preserve them.

You're right about the population decline numbers. Baltimore is more similar to Newark. They both lost about the same population percentages, although Newark is still pretty dense for an American city.

I hate these "shrink the city" solutions, because they don't actually address the problems with shrinking cities. The answer is almost certainly a solution that is politically hard, but "shrink the city" sounds cute and innovative and will get a little attention from the press.

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I’d guess they also have a better house stock, brick, compared to the wooden Detroit, Cleveland or St. Louis, where it might be more challenging to preserve them.

Just a friendly reminder that nearly every building in St. Louis was/is brick and that St. Louis brick is some of the highest-quality brick in the US. (Again, St. Louis was the largest brick manufacturer in the WORLD around the turn of the 20th century.) Honestly, I would venture that a typical St. Louis pre-war brick dwelling (some row houses, most detached-but-almost-rowhouse and multifamily) is of higher quality than a canonical Baltimore row house. In any case, I don't think housing stock quality made the difference. I think Baltimore had less room to sprawl, is embedded in a region of much higher population density, and for the most part didn't plow highways through the middle of the city and level entire neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I hate these "shrink the city" solutions, because they don't actually address the problems with shrinking cities. The answer is almost certainly a solution that is politically hard, but "shrink the city" sounds cute and innovative and will get a little attention from the press.

I hate the idea of losing irreplaceable historic architecture as well but, nomenclature aside, part of the difficulty is that maintaining thousands of abandoned, decaying structures in hopes of eventual rehabilitation is a huge financial and logistical burden for cities that are struggling to maintain a million people's worth of infrastructure with a fraction of that tax base. I mean, St. Louis and Detroit, at least, are practically giving buildings away (for as low as $1) but it often takes more money to rehab them than it does to simply demo and build new.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I’d guess they also have a better house stock, brick, compared to the wooden Detroit, Cleveland or St. Louis, where it might be more challenging to preserve them.

That guess would be.. uh.. not accurate. I don't think you know enough about any of these cities if you're claiming that STL of all places has wooden housing stock.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

I hate the idea of losing irreplaceable historic architecture as well but, nomenclature aside, part of the difficulty is that maintaining thousands of abandoned, decaying structures in hopes of eventual rehabilitation is a huge financial and logistical burden for cities that are struggling to maintain a million people's worth of infrastructure with a fraction of that tax base. I mean, St. Louis and Detroit, at least, are practically giving buildings away (for as low as $1) but it often takes more money to rehab them than it does to simply demo and build new.

Historic architecture is one factor, but not really the worst part about it. Large areas of abandonment in a major American city is a policy problem. These right-sizing solutions don't actually address the policy issues creating the abandonment problem.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I hate these "shrink the city" solutions, because they don't actually address the problems with shrinking cities. The answer is almost certainly a solution that is politically hard, but "shrink the city" sounds cute and innovative and will get a little attention from the press.

It's stupid because none of these places need to "shrink" these aren't irrelevant coal towns these are major cities with massive economies and populations that have futures.

What needs to happen is reinvestment in inner cities, desegregating neighborhoods, better urban planning and greenbelts preventing excessive sprawl that choked them in the first place.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by The North One

That guess would be.. uh.. not accurate. I don't think you know enough about any of these cities if you're claiming that STL of all places has wooden housing stock.

I've never been in the US, that's why I don't know tiny details about cities up there. Made a mistake about St. Louis, but I stand correct about Detroit and Cleveland with their wooden housing. In any case, it was just a casual and non-pretentious comment regretting demolition of historic houses in Baltimore. I guess you also don't know specific details about foreign cities either.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ is baltimore really doing a lot worse than those other cities?

population decline so far this decade wouldn't indicate that it is.

You mean last decade. The latest years absolutely do. Baltimore:

The city lost 7,346 people, or 1.2% of its population, during the 12 months that ended July 1, 2018, according to census figures published Thursday.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/marylan...416-story.html

This info is a year older but for the sake of comparison. It also shows Baltimore losses accelerating:

Baltimore lost 5,310 residents, St. Louis 4,518, Chicago 3,825 and Pittsburgh 2,610 in the latest estimates.

And Detroit 2,376 that year.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/ne...ows/634577002/

Detroit's population has continued to drop, but the losses were smaller than in prior years. The city's population was 672,662 as of summer 2018, a loss of 1,526 people.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/ne...ty/4819610002/


So STL isn't looking as good as I thought it was and I can't find good Cleveland info, but it's absolutely true for Detroit. And utilities show thousands more homes are being occupied in the city so it's not really decline anymore compared to Baltimore.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I've never been in the US, that's why I don't know tiny details about cities up there. Made a mistake about St. Louis, but I stand correct about Detroit and Cleveland with their wooden housing. In any case, it was just a casual and non-pretentious comment regretting demolition of historic houses in Baltimore. I guess you also don't know specific details about foreign cities either.

Even Detroit's wooden housing stock gets overstated on this forum. Probably the same for Cleveland.

[mrnyc]

yeah cleveland had tons of brick apartments during its peak decades. much of it was a lot of lower quality worker apartment buildings though and has already been clear cut, so young people get the impression cle never had a lot of brick.

in better news, thankfully, cleveland's overall population loss is currently righting and as of now is almost flat, which is a massive improvement. its far from all roses though, the majority african american population continues to struggle and continues to move on.

here's a recent cle plain dealer blurb:

The U.S. Census reported earlier this year that Cleveland’s population declined by 1,700 between 2017 and 2018. That is the smallest single-year loss in decades. The worst period was 50 years ago when losses averaged 30,000 a year. Today, movers into the city are numerically close to equalling movers out.


more:
https://www.cleveland.com/letters/20...opulation.html

[Yuri]

About the population increase on Rust Belt cities, Buffalo and Pittsburgh up to 2015 were showing increase against the 2010 Census, the first time since the 1940's, but now both are once again into the negative terrain.

As the US population growth slowed down considerably this decade (below 7%), I think it will be hard to reverse the decline, even with all those Downtowns booms and urban lifestyle renaissance.

[park123]

There is a simple solution to this problem. Immigration quotas by state. Like Canada does by province. Why else do you think Saskatchewan isn’t hemoraging population? Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, they could all use a lot more immigrants. I’d wager that the main difference between a shrinking and high crime Chicago vs NY is basically that NY has gotten far more immigrants over the past 40 years.

One of the big problems with the USA, for everything, is that people don’t look at best practices in the rest of the developed world. They don’t learn.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by The North One

It's stupid because none of these places need to "shrink" these aren't irrelevant coal towns these are major cities with massive economies and populations that have futures.

What needs to happen is reinvestment in inner cities, desegregating neighborhoods, better urban planning and greenbelts preventing excessive sprawl that choked them in the first place.

How do you desegregate neighborhoods?

[JManc]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

About the population increase on Rust Belt cities, Buffalo and Pittsburgh up to 2015 were showing increase against the 2010 Census, the first time since the 1940's, but now both are once again into the negative terrain.

As the US population growth slowed down considerably this decade (below 7%), I think it will be hard to reverse the decline, even with all those Downtowns booms and urban lifestyle renaissance.

The downtown boom and urban renaissance in the Rust Belt is largely due to people already in these cities taking advantage of long forgotten areas of town. My hometown has realized that it has a quaint downtown and a ton of old buildings to renovate into lofts but the economy is still stagnant with little economic opportunity to lure people away from other cities.