 Shrinking to Succeed
By Ian C. Colgan
DECEMBER 14, 2007
Growth has long been synonymous with successful planning and economic development initiatives, whether it is managing, fostering or focusing increases in population, jobs, businesses or tax base. A community must grow in order to increase the standard of living of its residents, goes the conventional wisdom.
Yet Youngstown, Ohio has plans to challenge this paradigm. The former steel town has lost a significant number of jobs and residents over the past half-century. Averaging 168,000 people from 1930-1960, the U.S. census estimated the city to have only 82,000 people in 2005. This was primarily due to losses in manufacturing employment as the city’s steel mills closed one by one. For years the city sought to lure new employers to fill the void, but it was never enough to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs and residents.
Now, planners and local politicians seek to actively “shrink” Youngstown as a new economic development strategy for the community. Under its recently completed Comprehensive Plan, certain target neighborhoods, usually with significant amounts of vacant land, will eventually cease to exist. Vacant houses are slated for demolition; infrastructure like roads and sidewalks will be removed. These areas will then be transformed into green space, or agricultural land. Other neighborhoods would migrate from urban densities to a suburban or even rural built form as dwellings are removed, and vacant lots are rolled into remaining parcels.
 The goals of the plan are to improve the image of the city, reduce the cost burden of maintaining underused infrastructure, and generally organize the future of the city around a smaller population. It will not be an endeavor that the city will be able to accomplish in the short-term. The city has pledged not to remove any residents through eminent domain or other measures. This means that many target neighborhoods will have to empty out through attrition, something that could take as long as 20 years or more as residents slowly move out.
Yet, there is plenty to do right now. The city estimates it will take half a decade to bulldoze 1,000 of the worst structures, not including several hundred old stores, schools and other retail / commercial structures. A city councilman from the east side of the city estimates that within 10 years, 10% of the streets in his district will be empty enough to allow them to be closed.
The shrinking city may be a new concept in the U.S., but it has actively been used for years in Europe, where former industrial cities like Dresden have been successful in mitigating trends that have more German residents and industries moving west. Even Paris, thriving in the city center, is examining similar options in its declining industrial suburbs.
 While most cities go through boom and bust cycles of varying degree, there is reason to believe that with the unprecedented movement of labor and goods to and from the developing world, many cities in this country that have lost jobs and population may never be able to reclaim them. The decisions to implement Youngstown’s “Shrinking” plans were certainly made in this context. Today, the size of a community no longer equates prosperity. There are literally dozens of small and mid-sized communities that have strong, thriving economies despite a relatively smaller population. Some include Burlington, Vermont; Charlottesville, Virginia; Madison, Wisconsin; Eugene, Oregon; Rochester, Minnesota and San Luis Obispo, California. One may be quick to point out that most of these communities are university towns. Yet so too is Youngstown – Youngstown State University has over 13,000 students.
Is this a precedent for other American cities? There is certainly a large enough sample size. Across the country, 20 metropolitan areas lost 1% or more in population between 1990 and 2000, despite the country on the whole growing by 13%. East Coast and Midwest “Rust Belt” cities have been hit hard first by the decline of the railroad industry and then by the declining automobile industry. Textile and tobacco hubs in the south have struggled. Opportunities even exist in the west. Planners and academics gathered in Berkeley, California to discuss the viability of shrinking city practices in the post dot com era in San Francisco.
 The easy answer is that time will tell. Youngstown is without a doubt one of the most troubled cities in the regard of population and job loss in the entire country. Other communities may not be quite ready to embrace what is seemingly a full reversal of economic development policy – shrinkage vs. growth. However, the implications of Youngstown’s initiative go beyond the intended ends. Despite whether a community chooses to go in a similar direction, Youngstown’s plan is still an excellent example of a comprehensive approach to examine problems, devise strategies to solve those problems, and implement them at a local, neighborhood level. Many a grand plan has stumbled in its implementation at the local level. In Youngstown’s case, goals were devised and tools were put into place to achieve those goals. In this sense it is a good example of a strategic economic development plan.
It is also an excellent example of intra-community cooperation. Planners from Youngstown State were instrumental in creating this plan alongside city planners and politicians. Youngstown State has been one of the few growth areas in the city, constructing new facilities as the city essentially crumbles around it. The results of the Youngstown Comprehensive Plan show what can be achieved in the name of mutual prosperity between cities and local universities.
Right now, shrinking to succeed appears to be a measured, thought-out and focused approach to mitigating the urban decline that has impacted many American cities.
Ultimately, the largest test will be the longevity of implementation. Can Youngstown realistically maintain this strategy over the long term? As we all know, local government administrations come and go. Policies and plans started by one mayor can end with the next one. A good example is Maryland, where many state-wide Smart Growth policies were rolled back with one administration change, and then re-instituted by another. Realistically, the likelihood of successive mayoral administrations supporting a strategy of this nature over a 20-30 year timespan is low, though not impossible. A drastic step such as this will likely require widespread support from citizens, professional staff and politicians over a span of a generation. If ends up being successful, it has the potential to be the most important lesson learned.
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