Comment on Hollander's “The bounds of smart decline: a foundational theory for planning shrinking cities”

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Erratum

Notes

¹Although legitimate distinctions can be made, within the frame of reference of this comment, there is considerable overlap between the use of the term opportunities, not only by Barry but in its general use in urban planning and social policy, and the use of the term capabilities in Sen (1999) and Nussbaum (2000).

²In that respect, I differ with Hollander's conclusion with respect to Sunbelt cities that the “basic physical processes and policy responses have much in common [with Rust Belt cities].” There are fundamental differences in both physical processes and policy responses between long-term systemic decline and what is currently taking place in some Sunbelt cities. While the course of these cities over the next decade or two may ultimately be one of systemic decline, it is at best premature to draw that conclusion at present.

³Although it should be noted that between 2000 and 2010 the Black population declined in absolute numbers by more than 10 percent in many shrinking cities, including Detroit, Flint, Cleveland and Youngstown.

⁴This figure, which is an estimate, is derived by comparing the number of dwelling units reported in the 1960 Census with the number of dwelling units dating from 1960 or earlier in the 2000 Census. Changes in Census methodology make it impossible to bring the figure current to 2010.

⁵An exception of sorts can be made for heavily subsidized developments, such as low income tax credit rental housing projects. These developments, however, are often highly problematic, since they typically create new housing units at rent levels no lower than in the private market, further exacerbating the already substantial housing surplus in the city or neighborhood and potentially increasing abandonment within the private market stock.

⁶While 45 percent of Cincinnati's population is African-American, only 6 percent of the balance of the metro's population is African-American; while only 8 percent of the metro's white population lives in the city, 54 percent of the metro's African-American population lives in Cincinnati. Poverty concentrations tend to be less extreme than racial concentrations, but still significant. Although only 14 percent of its metro's population lives in the city of Cincinnati, 31 percent of the metro's poor live in the city. Other older cities and their metro areas show similar disparities. In some metro areas, such as those of Cleveland and Newark, some older inner-ring suburbs have also become disproportionately poor and Black, such as East Cleveland or Irvington, New Jersey.

⁷A further correlative of the economic effects of shrinkage is that these resource-poor cities are increasingly unable to provide even a minimally adequate level of public services to their residents, or to maintain networks of infrastructure and facilities initially designed for a much larger population. Many such cities are currently teetering on the edge of bankruptcy (Muro and Hoene 2009).

⁸I am uncomfortable with the descriptor ‘smart decline' that Hollander uses to characterize his proposed approach, a term that would seem to imply, at best, a process of managing continued decline, and at worst, a deliberate decision to continue to decline. Whether such a process, or such a decision, however, may be appropriate for any of the cities under consideration is a complex and difficult issue arguably worthy of examination, but one well beyond the scope of this comment. The fact remains, however, that continued decline is not a goal of any community with which I am familiar.

⁹This was very much the case with respect to what are the two principal European shrinking city ‘success stories', Leipzig and Manchester, both of which have stabilized their populations and showed some signs of net population growth in recent years (Ferrari and Roberts 2004, Power et al. 2010).

¹⁰Fainstein (2006) offers a useful analysis of these issues as they applied to a project in the Bronx, where a market occupied by minority-owned small businesses was demolished and the owners dispersed, in order to accommodate a substantially larger and largely generic shopping mall developed by a major developer. Fainstein's analysis is nuanced, and represents a thoughtful attempt to draw upon the thinking of philosophers such as Rawls, Nussbaum and Harvey to help illuminate the world of everyday reality, which could have profitably been integrated by AUTHOR into his analysis.

¹¹Mayor Bing of Detroit has expressed his intention to pursue this strategy (Oosting 2010).

¹²The crux of the problem is that the typical house in a heavily disinvested, abandoned area in a city such as Detroit or Youngstown has no market value (nor does the land underneath it), so that the entire financial burden of making the occupant whole with respect to living conditions and quality of life, including the cost of providing the household with an alternative dwelling of good quality, falls on the public sector.

¹³A very recent and still-unpublished survey of 3,000 households in the East Side of Detroit conducted by Community Legal Resources found that roughly 50 percent of the residents were eager to move out of the area, while approximately 35 percent preferred to stay (Communication from Sam Butler, Community Legal Resources, May 19, 2011).