Abstract
Editors Margaret Dewar and June Manning Thomas have assembled a number of researchers to address the problems being faced by declining cities in the Northeast and Midwest of the United States. For at least a decade, many of these problems have been bundled into the discussion on shrinking cities. Young planning students may only associate such cities with the recent housing crisis, but the fact is that many American cities have been steadily losing population since the 1950s. Laudably, the editors have begun to drive home the dire situations facing these cities by using the more appropriate designation of “abandonment,” thus shifting the emphasis of study from “shrinking” to a more accurate description of the affliction faced by these cities. Dewar and Manning Thomas realize that the word shrink is too gentle an adjective for what has really been happening. For, while “shrinking” waistlines or “shrinking” debts may be welcome phenomena, to be abandoned has no such happy connotations. Abandonment clearly portrays a picture of loss, rejection, and emptiness. Dewar and Manning Thomas have pointed the reader in the right direction with their title: The City after Abandonment.
This renaming also highlights the need to develop an entire category of planning that goes against the grain of the entrenched traditions of pro-growth planning. Shrinking and abandoned cities need a new perspective in planning that focuses on delivering a working city that does not solely depend on economic development and growth. With this in mind, the editors state in the introduction that “this book aims to help readers, especially urban planners and policy makers, develop greater clarity about how their roles might change in a city that needs to adjust to a much less extensive built environment” (p. 14).
The editors correspondingly make the case for studying abandoned cities by noting that the remaining residents deserve a good quality of life, that the increased need for services affects the entire metro area and that these cities have a need for better environmental sustainability. The book is divided into three parts structured around three questions: “Part I: What Does the City Become after Abandonment?” “Part II: What Makes a Difference in What Cities Become after Abandonment?” and “Part III: What Should Cities Become after Abandonment?”
The title of Part I had me looking for chapters that described abandoned cities or gave explanations of the common problems that such cities face. Unfortunately, that is not what is found. A better title might have been “What Do the Remaining Residents Do after Being Abandoned?” Part I ably covers three different responses to abandonment within the city of Detroit. Lawson and Miller describe the establishment of community gardening and urban agriculture, Deng illuminates the difficulties of using Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) funding to build affordable housing, and Herscher lends insight into the expressive, artistic reactions to abandonment.
The heart of the book is found in “Part II: What Makes a Difference in What Cities Become after Abandonment?” Six chapters are devoted to this important question. Schatz begins by shining a light on the optimism that has been generated by the Ohio city of Youngstown’s planning efforts with her contribution “Decline-Oriented Urban Governance in Youngstown, Ohio.” Schatz, a member of the Shrinking Cities International Research Network, recounts the history of the creation and adoption of “The Youngstown 2010 Plan.” This is a story of a large sampling of stakeholders working together to form a plan for a city that had lost more than 60 percent of its peak population. Two results are worthy of note: the young age of both the mayor and the planning director, who had only experienced the city in decline, may have been a significant condition of the plan’s success; and, not much of the extensive plan has been implemented during the current recession.
In Chapter 5, Thomson compares the strategic geographic targeting approaches of three different abandoned cities: Cleveland, Detroit, and Baltimore. It is a fascinating account of the complexity of the endeavors to channel funds to specific areas of a city in an attempt to catalyze their rehabilitation. It would challenge even Tolstoy to keep track of all the characters, all the politics, all the obstacles, and all of the possibilities, but it makes great reading for any student of the city.
While most of the chapters are played out in Northeastern and Midwestern cities, Chapters 6 and 7 turn to the city of New Orleans. Currently famous for the effects brought to bear by the disasters of Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast Oil Spill, it is also a city that began to suffer and still suffers from abandonment that began decades ago. In 2010, an astounding 47,738, or 25 percent, of all property lots were vacant. In Chapter 6, Ehrenfeucht and Nelson do an excellent job of documenting the failing efforts to “right size” the city after Katrina and of analyzing some of the reasons why those efforts failed. As they note, “‘shrinking’ the footprint’ became a euphemism for denying the African-American residents the right to return” (p. 142). In Chapter 7, Lowe and Bates share their study of the efforts of the community development corporations (CDCs) of New Orleans to contribute to the reconstruction of the city. This is another excellent chapter that conveys the necessity for these cities to have strong public sector institutions, a simplified system for transferring vacant properties, and a nonprofit sector with the needed managerial and financial capacities to work efficiently and successfully.
Part II concludes with chapters by the editors. Dewar first weighs in with “What Helps or Hinders Nonprofit Developers in Reusing Vacant, Abandoned, and Contaminated Property?” She provides an excellent explanation of the complexity of skills and capacities that are needed to run a successful effort to address the problems of abandonment. With Dewar’s detailed rendering of the differences of the two cities she studied, Detroit and Cleveland, the realization emerges that the difference in having success or failure in these cities and the others discussed is the difference in the planning culture in each city and in the perspectives held by the people involved. As Dewar makes clear, “Cleveland had a policy-oriented government culture where city officials expected systems to work and where systems were transparent, but Detroit had a government culture where constituents needed to cultivate personal relationships to get attention to their needs” (pp. 186–87).
In Chapter 9, Manning Thomas’s “Targeting Strategies of Three Detroit CDC’s” takes a look at land targeting strategies, although this time among separate CDCs within only one city. Her purpose is to see what makes CDCs want to target their choices and particularly if the choices are made at the block level. All three CDCs choose to target their work but organizational differences and governmental policies both helped and hindered their progress. The chapter contributes well to the theme of the book, broadens the research that is given in other chapters, and serves as a solid example of research writing for master’s-level students and beyond.
In “Part III: What Should the City Become after Abandonment?” the first three of four chapters initiate conversations about the normative values for abandoned cities. Respectively, the chapters cover the creating of an abandoned city planning model, a sustainability model for such cities, and an urban design model for rightsizing these cities. In Chapter 10, Beauregard begins the search for an ideal model to use in planning for shrinking cities by setting out the steps used by the National Vacant Properties Campaign and then offering modifications that expand the model to include politics and implementation. Schilling and Vasudevan follow with “The Promise of Sustainability Planning for Regenerating Older Industrial Cities,” and Ryan sets out a very orderly vision of the possibility of rightsizing abandoned cities.
The final chapter by Dewar, Kelly, and Morrison brings the discussion back full circle of what may be the goals of planning for abandoned cities by reviewing and summarizing the lessons learned in two of the cities that have successfully created plans for addressing the situation: Youngstown, Ohio, and Flint, Michigan. This chapter also reiterates the editors’ goal to have this book be of assistance to general readers and planners who are willing to take on the challenges of abandoned cities. They and their authors have accomplished this quite handily and have contributed significantly to the knowledge base that will be needed to address the issues raised by abandoned cities.