Shrinking city
The phenomenon of shrinking cities generally refers to a metropolitan area that experiences significant population loss in a short period of time.
[1][3] Shrinking cities in the United States, on the other hand, have been forming since 2006 in dense urban centers while external suburban areas continue to grow.
These may include an aging population, shifting industries, intentional shrinkage to improve quality of life, or a transitional phase, all of which require different responses and plans.
Hollander et al.[6] and Glazer[7] cite railroads in port cities, the depreciation of national infrastructure (i.e., highways), and suburbanization as possible causes of de-urbanization.
[14] American loans were also used as political currency contingent upon global investment schemes meant to stifle economic development within the Soviet-allied Eastern Bloc.
[15] With extensive debt tying capitalist Europe to the United States and financial blockades inhibiting full development of the communist Eastern half, this Cold War economic power structure greatly contributed to European urban decline.
Great Britain, widely considered the first nation to fully industrialize, is often used as a case study in support of the theory of deindustrialization and urban decline.
[14] Political economists often point to the Cold War era as the moment when a monumental shift in global economic power structures occurred.
[14] With industry moving out of Western Europe and into the United States, rapid depopulation of cities and movement into rural areas occurred in Great Britain.
With industry now under private ownership, "free-market" incentives (along with a strong pound resulting from North Sea Oil) pushed further movement of manufacturing out of the United Kingdom.
[14] Under Prime Minister Tony Blair, the United Kingdom effectively tried to revamp depopulated and unemployed cities through the enlargement of service sector industry.
Leipzig, an East German city under Soviet domain during the Cold War era, did not receive adequate government investment as well as market outlets for its industrial goods.
[16] This deindustrialization, demographers theorize, prompted populations to migrate from the city center and into the country and growing suburbs in order to find work elsewhere.
As evident from the theory of deindustrialization, political economists and demographers both place huge importance on the global flows of capital and investment in relation to population stability.
[20] The product life-cycle theory was originally developed by Raymond Vernon to help improve the theoretical understanding of modern patterns of international trade.
[15] This lack of diversification, Friedrichs suggests, magnifies the political and economic power of the few major companies and weakens the workers' ability to insulate against disinvestment and subsequent deindustrialization of cities.
[15] This, in turn, allows a few economic elites in old-industrial cities such as St. Louis, Missouri and Detroit in the United States, to reinvest in cheaper and less-regulated third world manufacturing sites.
This contextualization is used to highlight globalization and the internationalization of production processes as a major driver causing both shrinking cities and destructive development policies.
[22] Many of these articles draw upon case studies looking at the economic relationship between the United States and China to clarify and support the main argument presented.
[20] This outflow, according to theorists, is caused by an inability for cities in richer nations to find a productive niche in the increasingly international economic system.
The migration of wealthier individuals and families from industrial city centers into surrounding suburban areas is an observable trend seen primarily within the United States during the mid to late 20th century.
The idea of "right-sizing" is defined as "stabilizing dysfunctional markets and distressed neighborhoods by more closely aligning a city's built environment with the needs of existing and foreseeable future populations by adjusting the amount of land available for development.
[33] Although the "right-sizing" approach may seem attractive to deal with vast vacant lots and abandoned houses with isolated residents, it can be problematic for people who are incapable of moving into these denser neighborhoods.
Although the concept of environmental justice and the movement it sparked was formally introduced and popularized starting in the late 1980s, its historical precedent in the context of shrinking cities is rooted in mid-20th century trends that took place in the United States.
For example, the early construction of freeways[47] coupled with practices such as redlining and racially restrictive covenants, physically prevented people of color from participating in the mass migration to the suburbs, leaving them in – what would become – hollowed and blighted city cores.
In large part because of white flight and suburbanization, the population loss perpetuated existing racial segregation and left people of color (mostly African Americans) in the city center.
Detroit's current circumstances, as it struggles to deal with a population less than half of that from its peak in 1950, are partially the direct result of the same racist process, which left only the poor and people of color in urban city centers.
[64] Mayor Bing clarified that people would not be forced to move, but residents in certain parts of the city "need to understand they're not going to get the kind of services they require.
"[65] In addition to right-sizing Detroit as a means to deal with a massively decreased city population and economic shortfall, Mayor Bing also undertook budget cuts.
[67] From an environmental justice perspective this is significant because a lack of automobile access, coupled with poor transit and historic decentralization, perpetuates what is often referred to as a spatial mismatch.
