Shrinking Cities and Understanding of the City Issue

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Strategies for Detroit and Baltimore
Dependence on Monetary Investments
A World of Both Growth and Decline
Conclusion
Reference List

Introduction

Cities of today are facing new challenges where among other things the increasing globalization is affecting the development of the city. One of the aspects of globalization is the tendency to concentrate growth and development in spots with a high density of people and capital. This development leads to a declining population and economy in other cities and these cities are denoted shrinking cities.

The idea of Shrinking cities is a recently invented phenomenon, but the problem of cities in decline has been a reality since the post World War II period. But with the new invention of the Shrink phenomenon, the awareness of these cities and the problems they are having is increasing, but moreover, a debate is raised regarding how to plan and design cities in decline.

The problem of Shrinking cities has most frequently been a problem in the Western industrialized areas, however, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has also been a rising frequency of Shrinking cities in Eastern Europe, and today it has become a worldwide problem that also influences countries such as Japan and South Africa. The reasons for this development are side effects from the increasing globalization and the change from an industrialized society to an age of knowledge and information. Thus, shrinkage is rooted in conditions such as sub urbanization, de-industrialization, post-socialism, increasing mobility, unemployment, the exodus of young people seeking opportunities elsewhere, and declining birth rates.

One of the main reasons for shrinkage is the de-industrialization process where factories move to other destinations where the production costs are cheaper. Other main reasons are the increasing mobility, the rural settlement (sub urbanization) and, the rural industrialization. An example of the suburban movement can be found in the U.S. where the suburban population increased by 12% in the period from 1970 to 1977 whereas the central city population decreased by 4.6% (Holcomb and Beauregard, 1981). This has lead to a spatial configuration of the cities, where the sub urbanization of the middle-class and the sub urbanization of jobs (factories/offices) are key elements and the inner cities have been abandoned (Sassen, 1991).

The phenomenon of shrinking cities is very broadly defined and seems more to be some kind of umbrella term, which broadly covers many different definitions and reasons for the problem of declining cities. Among other things, the phenomena of shrinking cities can be seen from a political-economical, a sociological and an urban planning perspective. The political-economical perspective sees shrinking cities as being cities, which suffers from an economical decline, whereas the sociological and urban planning perspectives see shrinking cities as cities with a decline in the population.

In this paper Shrinking cities are defined as cities with both a declining population and economy. This is seen as the most suitable because a city can be suffering from a decline in the population, but still have a growing economy and, on the other hand, a city can suffer from a declining economy and still have a rising population. It is the opinion that a Shrinking City both has an economic problem and a declining population and that it is impossible only to devote focus on one of these subjects when dealing with a Shrinking City. In addition to the above mentioned there are also questions about the spatial/physical and the social/human consequences of shrinkage, which have to be taken into consideration when working with the problem of shrinkage.

The two American cities Baltimore and Detroit are both shrinking. The population in Detroit City has from 1950 to 2003 decreased from 1.8 million to 879,575 inhabitants whereas the metropolitan area of Detroit is growing and in 2000 there were 3,903,682 inhabitants. In Detroit City approximately 81% of the population is black, many people do not have an education and many people have a very low income, some families are very poor and approximately 53.000 families live below the poverty level. Baltimore City has from 1990 to 2003 experienced a decrease in the population from 736,014 to 602,733. In Baltimore City there are twice as many black people than whites and approximately 24,000 families live below poverty level. Physically, the traces of decline can be detected in the many vacant buildings and in Detroit City there are 54,801vacant-housing units (14.4% of total housing units), whereas in Baltimore there are 48,149 vacant housing units (16.4% of the total housing units). (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005)

Table I: Baltimore 2003(U.S. Census Bureau, 2005).

These numbers indicate that there are both large spatial/physical and social/human consequences of being a Shrinking City. When looking at these two cities and the above numbers then it is not hard to picture both the economic cities with a high unemployment, but also the social problems that follow this economic decline. Further side effects like drug-problems, poorer schools, institutions etc. are tearing the community apart and the abandoned houses are supporting this very negative picture. In some areas it is like living in a ghost town and it seems as an evil circle, which is difficult to break. Therefore, when planning cities in decline like Baltimore and Detroit it is important to incorporate all aspects of shrinkage and therefore, both look at the demographic and the economic side, but also to include the physical, social and human aspects of the problem.

Table II: Detroit 2003 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005).

When looking at these Shrinking cities two subjects seem important to deal with in order to understand them. With shrinking cities, the city looses its population and this leaves large empty areas available in the city, and thus, the city we previously thought of as a high-density area becomes a more open structure. The second subject is that urban planners and designers have been so used to growth and how to handle growth when they are planning that the goal for the city, automatically, becomes growth and development. But if the economy is declining it does not seem comprehensive still to want growth and if the globalization is fostering this development of growth as well as decline then we also have to be able to plan and design for shrinkage.

Previous Strategies for declining cities in the U.S. Like in many other cities in America, the problem of decline in Baltimore and Detroit has been a reality during the last 35 years. In the 1970s the rising globalization affected the big industries of America – i.e. steel, textile, automobile, rubber etc. – and many factories had to close down. The planners and politicians were of the opinion that this decline had to be changed to immediate growth and in several cities revitalization strategies were used to change the condition of the affected areas. The goal was to revitalize empty and worn down areas through urban redevelopment strategies where interested investors got very favorable conditions.

Politically, it also was common to talk about reducing the scope and power of the government and thereby recreates the conditions for a rapid economic growth (Bluestone, 1982). The goal was to create growth and profit anew, and the focus was on offering good conditions for private investors. Social, human and cultural problems were not issues, and strategies for better living conditions for the people living in these declining cities were not on the agenda.

Strategies for Detroit and Baltimore

Examples of this kind of revitalization are Baltimore Inner Harbor and the Renaissance Center in Detroit. Here, central areas in both cities have gone through revitalization. In Detroit, Henry Ford Π build the Renaissance Center and when it opened in 1977 it was seen as a symbol of Detroit’s rebirth. In the late 1970s the inner harbor of Baltimore was redeveloped, fuelled by the hope that this would stop the city’s decline. But even though both projects were very prestigious and are stated as big successes, both cities are still suffering from decline and the revitalization has not been that successful. The downtown area of Detroit is almost abandoned and there are a lot of empty buildings and in Baltimore a huge ring placed between the suburb and the harbor is shrinking and is being abandoned, creating a huge gap between the harbor and the rest of the city.

The goal for these cities is still to have growth and e.g. in Detroit they are building new huge stadiums and casinos in the hope that this will bring growth and development to the city. But apart from these hopes of growth, local NGO’s are today doing more human projects such as the Parks & People in Baltimore and the Co-lab in Detroit. In Detroit, Co-lab works in collaboration with other groups in areas such as art, architecture, and design and they believe that they thereby can create better conditions for the people living there and can create social awareness. Parks & People in Baltimore try to revitalize the cities through community greening where the vacant lots are transformed into gardens and other recreational spaces, with the purpose of strengthening the community and creating an ecologically better city.

Dependence on Monetary Investments

These revitalization strategies show that we in the planning of the city always have been dependent on huge monetary investments. In the last 40 years the purpose of the strategies used on these Shrinking cities has been to change the decline to growth. By using traditional architectural, political, economical and planning principles, the objective has been to reverse the shrinkage to growth, and the way in which this objective can be met in relation to the use of architectural principles would have to be by means of new developmental inventions.

Throughout history, the idea of city planning has always been connected with growth, and these growth-scenarios have leaned heavily on the idea of progress, control and designation of growth. Especially, in the past hundred years growth has been the goal and the ideal that planners, politicians and architects have been working to achieve and control. But with these failed revitalization strategies it seems that decline is here to stay and that growth is not attainable for all cities.

A World of Both Growth and Decline

The Shrinking cities phenomenon indicates that we have entered a new period where both growth and decline are present and where we have to find new goals and ways of working with the city. The assumption that growth is the overall objective does not seem sufficient when considering the Shrinking cities phenomenon, because it presupposes an adjusted approach to the city, where it seems more comprehensive to see the contemporary city as influenced by both growth and decline and to see the city as an interactive organism which changes between the dynamic processes of growth and decline.

The two parameters growth and decline cannot be designated as dichotomies, but instead decline is rather an aspect of growth. The cities are not their own masters to the same extent as previously, but enter in a long row of networks, which influence the cities and their development. It is therefore unambiguous to talk about the city as being an independent enclave – it is more correct to characterize the contemporary society as a network-society where cities, regions, countries are connected through different flows and networks.

This coming of both growth and decline is strongly connected with the shift from “Fordist” to “post-Fordist” economy and the coming of the Global Knowledge Based Economy. Bob Jessop (2004; p44) defines “post-Fordism” as a concept of dealing with: “the recent changes in growth dynamics, changing forms of competitive advantage of cities, regions, and nations as well as of firms, clusters, and economic networks, and changing forms of economic and social policy”. In this new situation the role of cities is changed into being regarded as engines of economic growth where they are key centers of economic, political, and social innovation and where they are key actors in promoting and consolidating international competitiveness and innovation (Jessop, 2004; p59).

This role of cities is what Saskia Sassen (1991) describes in her book “The global City” where she states that many major cities have a new strategic role in the world’s economy. This development has had massive impact on both international economy and urban form. The main aspect for Sassen is that the “more globalize the economy becomes, the higher the agglomeration of central functions in a relatively few sites, that is, the global cities” (Sassen, 1991; p5). This also means that some cities are the winners, which take it all, and others have lost their role or have never had a leading role as important cities and these cities suffer even more from this concentration of economy and people.

Prior to the current phase, there was high correspondence between major growth sectors and the overall national growth. Today we see increased asymmetry: the conditions promoting growth in global citiescontain as significant components the decline of other areas of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan and the accumulation of government debt and corporate debt. (Sassen, 1991; p12) Thus, thereby growth and decline are not distinct, but they are closely connected, and Sassen (1991) says that the growth of some cities very much rests on the shrinkage of other places. In addition to that Stephen Graham(2002) talks about how some places strengthen their strategic roles and are becoming important high value centers of control, research and innovation in the global world while other areas are left behind and only have lower value activities.

The high value places Graham denotes “Stickey Spaces” whereas he refers to the others as “Slippery Spaces”. Graham concludes that the “Sticky Spaces” are going to grow and maintain their positionwhereas there is a much more problematic future for the cities that do not have the advantages of becoming a “Sticky Space”. This shows that the emerging technological landscape has a very uneven geography where the tendency is that “the winner takes it all” and where the big metropolitan cities will continue to grow and become completely dominating. This creates a fracture between the mega-poles and the surrounding areas, which are left behind, and Graham sees a need for rethinking: “[…] the relationship between so called global cities and the traditional idea of the hinterland” (Graham, 2002; p121)

Utilize the Potentials of the Specific Place From the above mentioned it is obvious that the phenomenon of Shrinking cities is not going to disappear, but it might even be increasingly true for cities which are not global and which cannot follow the pace of the global world. It seems as though some sort of segregation is being created between cities where some cities are winners and other are losers, and a geographical differentiation appear in which not all cities can fulfill this role of engines of growth and thus, it is important to focus on what we are going to do with these cities. The shrinkage of cities can be seen as a consequence of growth, and this newly defined field has to be incorporated into planning theory.

With this recognition of both growth and decline and the fact that the Shrinking cities are not going to disappear we have to use a new perspective and to develop new planning tools. But, when growth is not the cities, then what is? It is the opinion that there is no easy solution to this problem and there is no single answer to what we are going to do and how we are going to plan these cities. But there is a need for a change of paradigm both in addition to the way we understand the city and in the way we are working with the city. There is a need for reinventing or rediscovering the values on which we shall work with the city. We have to think in new urban relations, thus, cities in decline become a new urban condition. In this reformulation of values it is important to work with many different aspects and turn on many different handles in this transformation process.

One thing is for sure there is a need for adjusted planning tools where we consider architecture, planning and urban design and incorporate the concept of designing for and with shrinkage in our minds. In this process it is important to start with the local potential of the specific place and not just use a top down approach and put money into the shrinking area. By using the local resources it is possible to develop new initiatives based on the potentials and unique characters of the individual city. One of the things that could be used in this transformation process is to reuse the empty abandoned areas and houses where a new use of the landscape or new socio-spatial forms could be a possibility. In this work there could be a temporary aspect where temporary installations or events could be the starting point for new permanently activities and interventions and could be the engine in planning. The New Understanding of the City – the Urban Landscape

One of the structures that need a reinterpretation and which could be worked with in new ways is the open structures or the landscape of these Shrinking cities.

cities that suffer from decline have often undergone some obvious physical changes where huge areas of the city have been abandoned. The physical consequences are very obvious when looking at shrinking cities like Baltimore and Detroit. The cities do not have a traditional structure because the build structures are getting torn down or are becoming symbolic ruins of another time where people lived in the city. These empty abandoned buildings and the fenced lots indicate the state of the city. The emptiness of these cities is striking and demolition of houses is more frequent than the building of new and as Dan Hoffman (2001; p101) says the: “”Unbuilding” has surpassed building as the city’s major architectural activity”. E.g. in Detroit, in 1990, the city spent $25 million on the removal of abandoned houses and other structures (Daskalakis et al., 2001).

A way of describing these empty areas in the city is to use the term “Terrain Vague” by Ignasi de Solá-Morales (1995). It represents a united description for leftover, insignificant areas and Solá-Morales uses the term to describe the post-urban remains of the old industrial town. They stand as proof of the dissolution and the obsolescence of the modern industrial city and the change of these areas into a post-urban landscape. ”On the one hand, vague has the sense of vacant, void, devoid of activity, unproductive, in many ways obsolete; on the other hand, vague has the sense of imprecise, undefined, vague, without fixed limits, with no clear future in sight.” (Solá-Morales, 1996; p23)

Terrain Vague is the French word for empty land but it has a much more subtle definition, where among others it contain the possibility for new opportunities and the expectations of freedom and free time. In the work with them it is necessary to colonize them anew where we use the individual qualities of these spaces.

”To conserve, to manage, to recycle the terrain vague, the residual spaces of the city, cannot be simply to reorder them in order to incorporate them once again into the efficient productive mesh of the city, canceling out the values residing if their vacancy and absence. On the contrary, it is this vacancy and absence that must be preserved at all costs, and which must register the difference between the federal bulldozer and the sensitive approach to these places of memory and ambiguity.” (Solá-Morales, 1996; p23)

The Poly-nuclear City it is often the older parts of the city that is abandoned and often is it the city centre. But, moreover, it is the old understanding of the city, which is shrinking. The concept of the city is no longer a high-density area, but the landscape has entered into the city and these Shrinking cities dissolve into a new kind of indescribable urbanism where the city in many ways has disappeared (Daskalakis et al., 2001). The result, as Hoffman (2001) points out, is that cities like Detroit have become the suburb of their own suburbs. But it also makes clear that there has to be a discussion about the unbuild and the look of the contemporary city.

The city’s build structures are no longer the dominating structure in the contemporary city, but the city contains just as much infra structural systems and open structures. This is very different from the past, where Lewis Mumford, among others, has been of the opinion that the city was a physically dense settlement (Oswald and Baccini, 2003). Therefore, it seems more comprehensive to talk about the city as an urban landscape where the contemporary city is understood as a hybrid form of open structures, build structures and infrastructure. With this urban landscape the two, previously very separate, subjects; city and countryside melt together and create a new kind of urbanism. Thomas Sieverts (2003) states that we get what he calls the “urbanized landscape” or the “landscaped city” and that even though it is mostly evident in America, the European dense city will also dissolve. One can say that this dissolving of the city and the sprawl like condition is a result of the goal of city growth in the past, where progress and development were the key issues in planning.

This broken dense structure also indicates that the understanding of a city as consisting of a centre and a periphery is not fruitful anymore and it may be more suitable to enhance a poly-nuclear understanding where the city is seen as enclaves connected through different networks. This understanding is shared by Steven Graham (2002), among others, as he states that we live in a more undefined and fractured society where the urban periphery can be the centre and the centre can be the margin. This means that the hinterland is able to determine what remains of the centre and this becomes the dynamic of the contemporary (Dear, 2002).

The Landscape as a New Identifying Element is the description of the urban landscape and the fact that these Shrinking cities have many abandoned areas, could give rise to a reinterpretation of the physical structures of the city. There is the possibility of creating an entirely new kind of urbanity where the physical structures of the city are re-interpreted and where the open structures could take on a large role. In this process the landscape is being given an expanded meaning. This expansion is in accordance with the opinion of Alex Wall (1999) when he defines the landscape as the ground surface of the city. “In describing landscape as urban surface…..I refer to the extensive and inclusive ground-plane of the city, to the “field” that accommodates buildings, roads, utilities, open spaces, neighborhoods, and natural habitats.” (Alex Wall, 1999; p233)

The landscape can be used as an active element in the planning of cities to create better cities both in addition to sustainability and life quality. The open structures can be seen as a planning instrument to structure and create identity in the weakly defined areas as many Shrinking cities is. Apart from this, the landscape can be an architectonic quality and all in all work done on the open structures of the Shrinking cities can contribute to improve the Shrinking cities. Koolhaas (2001), is of that opinion that the landscape can be an essential part of urbanization and thereby also a vital part of planning and that there increasingly arise hybrids of infrastructure, build structures and landscape.

Conclusion

The above discussion with both the urban landscape approach and the planning approach for both growth and decline indicates that we have to work with the Shrinking cities and not ignore or transform them, but instead work with the qualities of the specific place. The assumption of growth as the basis for city development is questioned by the rising phenomenon of Shrinking cities, and it seems to be more comprehensive to understand the contemporary city as a dynamic Urban Landscape containing spots of both growth and decline. Here, shrinkage and growth are dynamic concepts that change in accordance with developments e.g. at the social, cultural, economical or technical level and the landscape is becoming a vital part of the city which can be the identifying element in the contemporary city.

When working with shrinking cities issues such as life quality and creation of new conditions for the people left behind become very important. It is important to throw light upon the political, cultural and human consequences of shrink, but more over it is important to work with these aspects when planning the Shrinking cities. Furthermore, it is also important to create new identifying elements and to create new values for these abandoned areas.

One way of doing so, are to work with the open structures of the city and with the open structures, as starting point create new socio-spatial spaces with new uses, functions and designs. Of course it is important to create new jobs, but the life-quality of the people is also important because when bettering that they may want to start their own businesses. The physical and the psychological are connected and it is those two aspects together that can make the Shrinking cities livable again. Bob Jessop points out that if we want to succeed in this new period of post-Fordism we have think in new aspects to create a new economic regime and thereby also to maintain our cities. The rationale for this continuing effort is that cities economic growth and competitiveness in the 21^st century will depend on creating, owning, preserving, and protecting its intellectual property. (Jessop, 2004;p50).

This is very much in line with the idea of this paper – we have to think differently in order to succeed. Also Saskia Sassen sees the potential in the Shrinking cities:”[….] where massive declines have made possible totally new land uses or sociospatial forms “(Sassen, 1991 p251). As an example of how to work with shrinking cities one could look at strategies such as the one used in IBA Emscher Park in the Ruhrgebiet in Germany where the integrated planning-policy models are used. It is a new way of realizing and organizing an urban project in a shrinking area. It seems most common to have a very negative approach to Shrinking cities and the development in these areas – but in order to change things it is necessary to think positive and to work with the city and the situation and not against it. We have to work on different scales – both globally, nationally, regionally and locally– we have to work with different strategies on different levels, and these different levels have to be connected and to be working together.

Reference List

Books

Alex Wall (1999). Programming the Urban Surface, in James Corner (ed.) (1999). Recovering Landscape – Essays in Contemporary Architecture, New York, Princeton Architectural Press.

Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, (1982). The De industrialization of America – Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry, New York, Basic Books, Inc., Publishers.

Bob Jessop (2004). Recent societal and urban change: principles of serialization and their application on the current period, in: Tom Nielsen et al. (ed.) (2004). Urban Mutations: serialization, scale, mobility, Aarhus, Arkitektskolens Forlag.

Dan Hoffman (2001). Erasing Detroit, in Georgia Daskalakis, Charles Waldheim and Jason Young (ed) (2001). Stalking Detroit, Barcalona, Actar p48-56 and p101-103.

Franz Oswald and Peter Baccini (2003). Netzstadt – Designing the Urban, Basel, Birkhäuser.

Georgia Daskalakis, Charles Waldheim and Jason Young (ed) (2001). Stalking Detroit, Barcalona, Actar.

H. Briavel Holcomb and Robert A. Beauregard (1981). Revitalizing cities, Washington D.C., Association of American Geographers.

Ignasi de Solá-Morales (1996): Present and Futures. Architecture in cities, in : Present and Futures, Architecture in cities, Barcelona, ACTAR, pp. 10 – 23.

Ignasi de Solá-Morales (1995). Terrain Vague, in Cynthia C. Davidson (ed.) (1995). Anyplace, USA, Anyone Corporation.

Michael J. Dear (ed.) (2002). From Chicago to L.A.: Making sense of urban theory, California, Sage Publications, Inc.

Rem Koolhaas et al. (2001). Great Leap Forward. Harvard Design School Project on the City I, Taschen, Harvard Design School.

Saskia Sassen, (1991). The Global City, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press.

Steven Graham (2002). In Henning Thomsen (ed.) (2002). Future cities – The Copenhagen Lectures, Copenhagen, Fonden Realdania.

Journals articles

Eric Frijters and Peter Van Veelen (2004). Shrink and the City, ARCHIS is Shrinking, #1 2004, 41-54.

Web sites

U.S. Census Bureau ( 2005). Fatcs about Detroit and Baltimore. Web.

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