Urban Shrinkage

Structural housing vacancy and abandonment occur in many circumstances and are phenomena that generally happen when something disturbs the overall ‘equilibrium’of a given area. Urban scholarship has often considered these forms of housing emptiness in relationship to processes of urban decline, suburbanisation, deindustrialisation, financial crises and the collapse of local housing markets (Keenan et al, 1999; Glock and Haussermann, 2004; O’Callaghan et al, 2018). Indeed, in certain contexts, processes of economic and social restructuring have led to declining or collapsing demand, resulting in housing underuse, disuse and eventual abandonment (Power and Mumford, 1999; Couch and Cocks, 2013; Wang and Immergluck, 2019). Far from being natural, these processes are often closely linked to the political economy of uneven development and to the action of discrete actors in the realms of the state, the real estate industry and finance (Coppola, 2019).

Urban shrinkage, provoked by the combination of long-term depopulation and economic decline, is an emerging challenge now facing most Russian cities, which appears to be the largest shrinking urban system in the world. Shrinking cities have attracted the attention of scientists, policymakers, and planners throughout the world due to the inadequacy of the available planning and policy approaches and tools that have been developed for growth scenarios. However, in Russia, the long-term population decline is still viewed by most as a temporary phenomenon provoked by the dramatic socioeconomic transition and, accordingly, spatial planning remains growth-oriented. The PhD thesis is motivated by the contradiction between the current demographic development in Russian cities and the obsolete planning approaches and methods being used. The study aims at discovering evidence of population decline as an important trend in the development of Russian cities and to then identify which opportunities exist for the transformation of municipal and regional spatial development policies in order to appropriately address this urgent challenge.
The research pursues two main lines of investigation: the urban shrinkage phenomenon itself (its definitions, causes, consequences, threats and opportunities) and the spatial planning of cities experiencing shrinkage conditions. Within this logic, several levels of research have been developed: 1) analysis of the global discussion of the topic through the literature review; 2) confirmation or applicability of the aspects discussed in the literature to the Russian context (at the national and regional levels) as a verification for the necessity of a deeper analysis; 3) testing the developed hypothesis at the city level through multiple case studies; 4) integration of the results obtained through the case studies into the general view; 5) evaluation of the findings.
The thesis provides empirical evidence drawn from cities located in southern Russia, which statistically represents the most favourable part of the country in terms of its demographic development. The intention was to show that even in an area where depopulation is not considered an issue; many cities are shrinking and experience a lack of demographic resources that could compensate for their depopulation. The research focuses on both shrinking and growing small to medium-sized cities in southern Russia, investigating through the comparative analysis the drivers and consequences of population change, but also how existing policies reflect upon demographic issues.
Based on a mix of quantitative and qualitative data, I have found that population decline is a new reality for most Russian cities, where the current and future depopulation trends are an unavoidable process. The consequences are especially notable in small and medium-sized cities, which are more vulnerable and often lack development resources. However, the current negative transformations in both shrinking and growing cities result from a combination of complex factors, the influence of which should be deeper analysed through further research. Due to such discreet effects of depopulation, planners and policy-makers are largely ignorant of these processes, not only because of a lack of “awareness”, but also due to institutional, managerial, professional, and educational issues, which must yet be solved in order to provide a professional approach to spatial planning. Another discovery of the research is of a specific pattern of urban shrinkage in the cities of southern Russia where depopulation happens over the background of a growing need for housing and infrastructure construction and an extensive ongoing urban development. Moreover, growth-oriented urban planning itself, which ignores demographic factors, creates conditions for the appearance of negative consequences of shrinkage in the future, such as abandonment, vacancy or infrastructure surplus, instead of using planning as an opportunity to prevent these effets.
This thesis therefore contributes to the general discussion on urban shrinkage. While the existing literature on the topic is mainly dedicated to various contexts that differ significantly from the Russian situation, this research helps to fill in the important missing element of the Russian experience in the global puzzle of urban shrinkage.

Since the end of the 2000s, the question of the decline of French medium-sized cities has become central within the scientic and public debate. More specically, two processes are underlined: the devitalisation of city centres on the one hand, and urban shrinkage on the other hand. The devitalisation of city centres has been studied in several institutional reports. It is characterised by high rates of vacant housing and high street shops vacancies, a fall in visits to the city centre , an impoverishment of residents and population losses. In geography, urban studies and planning, the dynamics of urban shrinkage have been discussed since the 1990s. They comprise a multidimensional urban crisis, triggered and characterised by job and population losses. This paper attempts to explore the relationships between these processes by underlining their similarities and differences with data analysis and multivariate clustering methods. By comparing medium-sized cities with small and large cities, the speci cities of urban decline in medium-sized cities are explored. It appears that cities are not homogeneously affected by urban decline. More particularly, a large number of weakened medium-sized cities display a distinctive feature: markers of decline are concentrated in their urban core.

Over the last 50 years, 370 large cities worldwide have severely depopulated, or shrunk, by at least 10%. Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is the third fastest U.S. shrinking city. Primarily a victim of deindustrialization, Johnstown faces severe decline issues related to depopulation, including social disorder and lowered quality of life. This project develops a framework for urban design for shrinking cities, integrating permanent functions into high development potential areas but temporary functions into declining areas. This approach allows for future development to occur through time as the city recovers. Using a GIS-based weighted overlay model to assess the threat level of decline, 4 sites were identified and strategies for each were developed. Master plans to retrofit new functions integrating residents' desire and demands into vacant / abandoned properties were then generated for each site. Rather than chasing hefty attempted quick-hitting developmental incentives, this approach will bring new long-term economic engines and lifestyles to the city due to a diversity in the economic base; it also pays attention to the social dimension of urban regeneration by providing a structured way to promoting social justice and equity in shrinking cities.

While population losses have accompanied urban development since the emergence of the first cities, it has only been quite recently that "shrinkage" has become a field of research in its own rights. Critical scholarly research stands in a somewhat difficult relation to this situation. On the one hand, there are numerous contributions calling for a general "acceptance" of shrinkage and more "openness" towards planning for a reduced population size. On the other hand, one can find contributions that criticize the limits of existing rightsizing policies, describing smart shrinkage as an exclusionary project, or set it into a context of the current austerity moment. The evaluation of this new round of urban policies is thus controversial. The common denominator of the papers in this special issue is a call for both widening the perspective on rightsizing policies by embedding them into a wider context of neoliberal urbanization and a demand for more attention towards context-specific pathways, dynamics and outcomes. At the same time, we want to highlight not only the local specificities but also provide a comparative political economy perspective on shrinking cities.

La maggior parte dei territori italiani, anche quelli fortemente urbani, si trova ormai in condizioni di persistente contrazione demografica, economica e/o funzionale. Nei territori in svuotamento permangono problematiche abitative rilevanti, che però richiedono diversi sguardi e strategie più adeguate rispetto ai paradigmi (perlopiù quantitativi) della crescita. Al contrario, adeguate strategie di downscaling e rightsizing potrebbero meglio rispondere ai processi di contrazione, migliorando la vita degli abitanti. Partendo da queste ipotesi, il contributo propone una visione “qualitativa” della questione abitativa nei territori urbani in contrazione e, avvalendosi di due casi concreti a Torino e Taranto, propone alcune riflessioni preliminari sul tema. In particolare, emerge come nell’elaborazione di politiche urbane permanga un approccio di attrazione e valorizzazione, che rischia di obliare (quando non aggravare) i problemi e le istanze di chi resta.

Shrinkage since the collapse of state socialism has been evident in many Russian cities, especially in small and medium-sized (SMS) ones. The Russian state, de jure, has been promoting the idea of self-governance; thereby, urban municipalities ought to develop and adopt own planning decisions to cope with various challenges, including those related to depopulation. The current research focuses on planning responses to urban shrinkage. It aims at understanding how the phenomenon is conceptualized in the planning documents of Russian SMS cities and what solutions are proposed to cope with it in the conditions of inherited from the Soviet times housing and infrastructural deficit. The empirical evidence for the analysis is drawn from over 70 SMS cities located in Central and Southern Russia. Results state, that despite the obvious and persisting urban shrinkage, most of the reviewed documents ignore or underestimate the phenomenon. Instead of suggesting flexible solutions, which would help overcome the shortage of urban infrastructure not aggravating shrinkages’ effects in the cityscape, long-term spatial plans are being developed with hope for future growth proposing measures that contribute to the intensification of urban sprawl and fragmentation.

In: R. D'Arienzo, C. Younes "Pour une ecologie des milieux habites", Metis Press, Geneve, 2014.

In this contribution I intend to discuss how US shrinking cities have come to be sites of exceptional relevance in the current conversation regarding the « reciclying » of resources in urban contexts. Following a brief presentation of the overall problem of urban shrinkage, I discuss what I consider to be three privileged dimensions of crisis and experimentation - property, nature and use regulation - in the practice of planning in the context of shriking cities that are related to this conversation and then finally move to some conclusive thoughts.

The issue of urban shrinkage has appeared in the scientific and political agenda mainly due to its negative effects expressed in the cityscape. Being a widespread phenomenon, it provoked the development of policies addressing it. Still, there is a significant gap between demographic policies and the management of depopulation’s spatial footprint. Russia has been experiencing a dramatic demographic crisis after USSR’s collapse. In the last 25 years about 70% of Russian cities have depopulated, the process has been especially evident in small and medium-sized (SMS) cities. Depopulation is a notable concern for national and regional policies. However, the still unsatisfied housing need, lack of infrastructure, and continuing construction boom pose additional challenges for urban planning. The present contribution focuses on formal spatial planning in small and medium-sized Russian shrinking cities and policy’s reaction to depopulation. Its aim is in assessing if and in what context do the local spatial plans recognize current and projected population trends in SMS shrinking cities, as well as if perceptions of shrinkage change in different regional contexts. The obtained results clearly point to the fact that the common perception of depopulation in the Russian urban planning is largely ignoring; growth paradigm is still the only one in use. Hence, there are no clear strategies addressing current and future effects of depopulation.

Dans un contexte de declin durable de sa population totale et de stagnation economique prolongee, l’Etat developpeur japonais encourage depuis la fin des annees 1990 des politiques de renovation urbaine et de densification destinees a ameliorer la qualite de vie d’une societe âgee. Celles-ci contribuent de facto a maintenir l’attractivite globale des centres metropolitains du Japon, specifiquement celui de Tōkyō, au detriment du reste du territoire national. Cette situation fragilise jusqu’a la conurbation d’Ōsaka-Kyōto-Kōbe (Keihanshin), qui connait des mutations sociales et spatiales lisibles dans la reconfiguration des trajectoires quotidiennes de ses residents. Une approche geographique des processus de decroissance demographique et de l’evolution des deplacements journaliers au sein de la Keihanshin depuis la fin de la Bulle donne ainsi a voir les incidences du contexte post-Decennie perdue (1991-2002) sur les dynamiques urbaines et les mobilites dans une region metropolitaine reputee pour la densite de ses reseaux de transport. Fonde sur la cartographie de statistiques issues des recensements nationaux et d’enquetes publiques de transport, cet article montre comment le paradigme de la recentralisation urbaine (toshin kaiki) participe au declin des banlieues vieillissantes en se substituant a un modele residentiel qui valorisait l’acces a la propriete d’un logement en banlieue. Il s’ensuit une differenciation des pratiques de mobilite entre centres et peripheries plus forte que durant la phase d’etalement des villes japonaises.

Since the end of the 2000s, the question of the decline of French medium-sized towns has become central within the scientific and public debate. More specifically, two processes are underlined: the devitalisation of city centres on the one hand, and urban shrinkage on the other hand. The devitalisation of city centres has been studied in several institutional reports. It is characterised by high rates of vacant housing and high street shops vacancies, a fall in visits to the city centre, an impoverishment of residents and population losses. In geography, urban studies and planning, the dynamics of urban shrinkage have been discussed since the 1990s. They comprise a multidimensional urban crisis, triggered and characterised by job and population losses. This paper attempts to explore the relationships between these processes by underlining their similarities and differences with data analysis and multivariate clustering methods. By comparing medium-sized cities with small and large c...

Places affected by urban shrinkage are widely depicted as left behind places characterized by decline and decay. Refugees are generally constructed as victims or ‘dangerous other’. Hence, place-making and negotiations of belonging in shrinking cities are accompanied by multiple layers of stigmatization. Despite this contextual factor and even though many questions related to inter-group relations in shrinking cities are still unanswered, refugee-centered revitalization of shrinking cities is being discussed among city officials, planners and in the scientific community. This paper investigates local discourses on urban shrinkage and refugee arrival as contextual factors for negotiations of place and belonging, and connects to previous studies on the stigmatization of declining cities and the othering of refugees. It uses Nayak’s (2019) concept of re-scripting narratives to analyze whether acts of re-writing apply not only to stigmatizations of place, but marginalized groups as well....

Resumen:

España ha conocido un fenómeno de vaciamiento en sus espacios rurales y ciudades pequeñas, origen de un desequilibrio territorial en favor de las grandes áreas metropolitanas. Mientras, las ciudades medias experimentaban una fuerte expansión, tanto demográfica como sobre todo urbanizadora, en la primera década del siglo XXI. Sin embargo, se han visto afectadas por la Gran Recesión y aparecen ya núcleos en declive dando lugar a una segunda ola de despoblación. El fenómeno de las shrinking cities o ciudades en decrecimiento es un tema de interés académico, pero todavía un campo de estudio incipiente en la literatura española. Esta investigación tiene el objetivo de incentivar su análisis a través de dos aspectos clave: la despoblación y la evolución del empleo. El método es el análisis comparado de las tasas de crecimiento continuo (Tcc) de ambos factores en las ciudades medias en decrecimiento durante las dos primeras décadas del siglo XXI. Los resultados obtenidos evidencian que no hay una correlación directa entre la despoblación y la evolución del empleo como fenómeno general, pero sí en algunos casos concretos. Por lo tanto, se debe ampliar el rango de casuística para encontrar las razones del decrecimiento.

Abstract:

Spain has experienced a phenomenon of emptying of its rural areas and small towns, which has led to a territorial imbalance in favour of the large metropolitan areas. Meanwhile, medium-sized cities experimented a strong expansion, demographically and, above all, in terms of urbanisation, in the first decade of the 21st century. However, they have been affected by the Great Recession and are now in decline, giving rise to a second wave of depopulation. The phenomenon of shrinking cities is a subject of academic interest, but still an incipient field of study in the Spanish literature. This research aims to encourage its analysis through the study of two key aspects: depopulation and evolution of employment. The method is the comparative analysis of the continuous growth rates (Tcc) of both factors in the shrinking medium-sized cities during the first two decades of the 21st century. The results obtained show that there is no direct correlation between depopulation and the evolution of employment in Spanish medium-sized cities as a general phenomenon, but certainly in some specific cases. Therefore, the range of cases must be widened in order to find the reasons for the decline.

The present paper examines the relation between urban shrinkage processes and urban planning through the analysis of different conceptualisations of the phenomenon in planning documents, and its further interpretation in planning visions and planning strategies for shrinking cities. Accordingly, a qualitative analysis of the content of eighteen comprehensive plans for shrinking cities located in the Rust Belt area has been developed in order to identify how urban shrinkage has currently been defined and contextualised in the United States. We argue that existing ambiguities at policy level have led to varying and inconsistent planning efforts to address shrinkage which consequently restricts the adoption of clear-cut strategies at urban level. The analysis also evaluates how the notion of perpetual growth still dominates traditional planning visions of development for American Rust Belt cities. The paper concludes that in understanding and dealing with urban decline, it is important...

Mon travail développe une approche comparative de deux projets d'aménagement des sites désindustrialisés en France, l'Ile-de-Nantes et les Docks-de-Seine, en se focalisant sur les cas de deux projets urbains représentatifs des politiques publiques participatives. La recherche vise à proposer de nouveaux modèles de planification des villes désindustrialisées en faisant le lien entre les programmes de renouvellement urbain et la question de la préservation du passé industriel. Dans un premier temps, je m'intéresse à la question de l'organisation spatiale et sociale des deux villes pendant la période de désindustrialisation. A partir des enquêtes quantitatives j'essaie de montrer que les nouvelles activités économiques ont influencé de nouveaux habitants à y installer ainsi qu'à la création des zones de fonctions mixtes. Le deuxième axe de l'exposé met l'accent sur la collaboration entre les professionnels habilités à produire l'espace urbain et les habitants des villes. A partir des enquêtes qualitatives menées dans deux villes auprès d'habitants, d'élus locaux et d'aménageurs, j'essaie de montrer les interactions entre les acteurs institutionnels et ceux de la société civile. Dans un dernier temps, je m'intéresse à la question de la préservation de l'identité industrielle. A partir d'une analyse critique de deux programmes de renouvellement urbain à deux échelles, la ville et le quartier, j'essaie de montrer les possibilités de transferabilité de politiques publiques territoriales d'une échelle à l'autre. On peut constater que les nouvelles activités économiques proposées dans les programmes de renouvellement urbain des deux sites ont réussi à augmenter le nombre d'habitants après une période de décroissance démographique. En même temps, ces activités sont inscrites dans des zones de fonctions mixtes qui accueillent des habitants de différentes catégories socio- professionnelles. En plus, les nouvelles politiques publiques participatives montrent que le système d'acteurs traditionnels d'élaboration de projets de renouvellement urbain est amené à redéfinir les rôles de chacun en instituant les habitants comme de véritables acteurs sociaux. Finalement, l'analyse critique du contenu des deux programmes de renouvellement urbain montre qu'il y a une interdépendance de politiques publiques à l'échelle de la ville et du quartier.

While the world’s total urban population continues to grow, not all cities are witnessing such growth—some are actually shrinking. This shrinkage has caused several problems to emerge, including population loss, economic depression, vacant properties and the contraction of housing markets. Such issues challenge efforts to make cities sustainable. While there is a growing body of work on studying shrinking cities, few explore such a phenomenon from the bottom-up using dynamic computational models. To fill this gap, this paper presents a spatially explicit agent-based model stylized on the Detroit Tri-County area, an area witnessing shrinkage. Specifically, the model demonstrates how the buying and selling of houses can lead to urban shrinkage through a bottom-up approach. The results of the model indicate that, along with the lower level housing transactions being captured, the aggregated level market conditions relating to urban shrinkage are also denoted (i.e., the contraction of h...

Demographic changes are responsible for a series of challenges such as population aging, intensification of the suburbs development procedures and urban shrinkage, which differs from area to area. In particular, as regards urban shrinkage, the long-term decrease of population in many cities is combined with a crisis in local economies, as a result of the collapse, for example, of traditional industries. The concept of “shrinkage”, for the description of which various terms have been used in the past, such as “urban decline”, “urban decay”, “urban rot” or “urban blight” is not distinctly defined. At the same time the strategies of urban development and regeneration, do not always take into consideration the necessity of adaptation to the shrinkage and the confrontation of its negative effects. The aim of this article is to analyse the shrinkage procedure in two aspects: theoretical and practical. In the first part, an effort takes place for the discussion of the prevalent views in th...

While the world’s total urban population continues to grow, not all cities are witnessing such growth, some are actually shrinking. This shrinkage causes several problems to emerge, including population loss, economic depression, vacant properties and the contraction of housing markets. Such issues challenge efforts to make cities sustainable. While there is a growing body of work on studying shrinking cities, few explore such a phenomenon from the bottom-up using dynamic computational models. To fill this gap, this paper presents a spatially explicit agent-based model stylized on the Detroit Tri-County area, an area witnessing shrinkage. Specifically, the model demonstrates how the buying and selling of houses can lead to urban shrinkage through a bottom-up approach. The results of the model indicate that along with the lower level housing transactions being captured, the aggregated level market conditions relating to urban shrinkage are also denoted (i.e., the contraction of housing markets). As such, the paper demonstrates the potential of simulation to explore urban shrinkage and potentially offers a means to test policies to achieve urban sustainability.