Climate change impacts – future shrinking cities of the west?

With the commencing of the Copenhagen climate conference this week, it seems appropriate to bring the subject of climate change into the context of shrinking cities. More specifically, looking at potential impacts that could lead to major future geographic shifts in population that could lead to shrinking cities of the future.

The climate change effect that comes to mind in thinking about need for shifting populations is sea level rise. The map to the right shows the a map from the EPA that exposes areas vulnerable to sea level rise on the Gulf Coast, starting at a potential rise of 1.5 meters (~5 feet). Predictions from bodies such as the IPCC and the United State Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) range from 8 inches to 6.5 feet by the end of the century, but consensus is closer to 2-3 feet max. Such projections could, and in the case of New Orleans, already are creating migration patterns out of vulnerable areas. This shift will require planning responses with some parallels to shrinking cities, but more dramatic “busts” of currently booming cities are a greater correlating concern in a hotter and drier US southwest.

The possibility of cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas, who have experienced decades of excessive growth, are now looking at real possibilities of water shortages that could very well lead to their demise. As a 2007 article in Toronto’s The Star, entitled “Could climate change herald mass migration?” suggests:

“At first glance, the crises of the rust belt and the Southwest would seem unrelated. They are, in fact, inexorably linked. Each has what the other does not. In Phoenix, tremendous affluence; in Cleveland, and in Detroit, Toledo, Youngstown, Buffalo, Rochester, Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, abundant, near-endless water – in the Great Lakes alone, as much as 25 per cent of the world’s supply.”

The article suggests, that an increasingly mobile population that quickly moved to the sun belt might very well be packing their bags to head back to the rust belt! The human need for fresh water is what led to the location of every historic city in history, only in the last 100 years or so have we decided that it was a good idea

to build megapolises in the middle of the desert. I will restrain myself from a lengthy diatribe of unsustainable land use patterns (see photo I recently took flying over Las Vegas) and water use with a lack of concern for the consequences, but the point remains that it may soon come to an end.

Las Vegas sprawling into desert - Future vacant property?

The USGCRP map of the US shows projections of a drier west…could this lead the horse back to water?

More than likely technology will offer solutions, but they will cost. If the true externalities of building golf courses and swimming pools in the desert must be paid, then by the end of the century many cities will be facing the same problems of the Detroits and Clevelands of today. Either way, Toronto is looking at this as a potential opportunity and perhaps other Great Lakes cities should do the same. At the same time, growing cities in the deserts of AZ, TX and CA should be seriously considering how to adapt to a drier future.

 

The Legacy of Sustainability

Increasingly, ‘Shrinking Cities’ are making plans to retool themselves as “smaller, yet mightier places.” Many of these plans – in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Youngstown, etc. – incorporate urban greening to make their communities more sustainable.

Unfortunately, low-income and minority residents often don’t participate in these discussions on greening their communities. Van Jones, an environmental activist, spoke to this in an interview last year:

“Somehow [African-Americans] bought into the thought that [environmentalism] was a hippie thing.”

He also said:

“Caring about the Earth and future generations is very consistent with African indigenous values.”

“It was really our commitment to be good stewards of the Earth. Our great-grandmother’s values are coming into vogue. These are not White values. These are universal values.”

The line “Our great-grandmother’s values are coming into vogue,” stuck a chord with me. I’m immediately reminded of the summers I spent in Shreveport, Louisiana with my grandparents as a child. My grandfather and grandmother had ample means as a school principal and teacher, respectively, but lived their lives in a fashion that today would be deemed “eco-friendly.” My grandfather planted fruit and pecan trees in their back yard and tended a small vegetable garden. My grandmother melted down scraps of soap and wax to make new bars of soap and candles. She repurposed old clothes into quilts, napkins, and cleaning rags. And when she cooked, nothing went to waste – grits leftover from breakfast became “grit logs” for dinner. They wouldn’t have considered themselves environmentalists, but they lived their lives in a fairly sustainable manner and they instilled these values in their children and grandchildren.

So it shouldn’t be as hard as one might think to get buy-in from minority and low-income residents on issues of urban greening, because sustainability isn’t a new concept. There is a legacy of sustainability within these communities; it just may be called it something else – self-sufficiency, frugality, cultural tradition, etc. The real challenge at hand is to connect the dots.

 

Portland Project Pushes the Envelope on Temporary Use

It turns out that one of my coworkers, Emily Rice – a recent graduate from the Urban and Regional Planning Program at Portland State University – has also studied strategies to address vacant and abandoned spaces in cities. As part of the LocusLab, she and three classmates partnered with the Central Eastside Industrial Council in Portland on the project No Vacancy! Exploring Temporary Use of Empty Space in the Central Eastside Industrial District. The project looked at how to enliven vacant spaces in the district with temporary activities and developments.

Their scope of temporary use includes the usual urban gardens and public art, but also includes some creative and innovative uses, such as: live performances, food carts, mobile marketing, new technology demonstrations, and micro-enterprise developments. Also interesting is their broad definition of “temporary” – it’s not constrained to just a few years, but even as short as a month or a few hours.

Emily said that, “the experience proved to be extremely telling with respect to community dynamics, business motivations, and misinterpretations of intentions.”  And that she “realized early on that any temporary projects that could even remotely be linked to negative impacts on the District were not going to be easily accepted.”

So to help make the Central Eastside Industrial District (CEID) more open to unconventional temporary uses, the group produced two publications. One is a No Vacancy! Guide that serves as a how-to manual for planning temporary projects in the CEID, and includes step-by-step checklists for property owners and space users to ensure proper planning. The other is a Final Report that explores the temporary use of vacant spaces and the applicability to the Central Eastside Industrial District. The report examines the benefits of temporary use, identifies examples of other projects around the world, considers the opportunities and barriers present in the CEID, and makes recommendations to the Central Eastside Industrial Council for implementing a program that supports a variety of temporary uses.

When the group presented their work to the Portland community, they chose the most fitting location – a vacant space in the historic Ford Building.

 

The Faces and Voices of Shrinking Cities

Numbers don’t do much for me. Which is why the news stories about Shrinking Cities I find most interesting are not about the aggregate numbers of blight, vacancy, job loss, and foreclosures, but the human stories (and photos).

Here are some interesting stories that I’ve come across:

• Detroit: The Troubled City
  A thought-provoking narrated photo essay that captures the frustrations and (conspiracy theories) of Detroit residents.
• A Close-Up Look at the Foreclosure Crisis
  A mortgage counselor talks about her work to help families facing foreclosures.
• A Flint Neighborhoods Digs Out
  A photo essay about neighbors in Flint, Michigan who plant a garden and orchard on landbanked property. (I blogged about this a while ago.)

These stories capture the struggles, perseverance, and opportunities in Shrinking Cities. And it’s this human element, not the statistics, that fuels my passion for planning.

What’s your favorite Shrinking Cities story?

 

What can we learn from the Rochester and Detroit greening plans to address the shrinking cities plague?

As economic and population declines continue to plague shrinking cities, a number of them are adopting greening plans to combat the vacant land and blight problems.  Two of those plans are Rochester’s Project Green: From Blight to Bright (soon to be made public) and Detroit’s Leaner, Greener Detroit (Nov. 2008).  They all stress greening strategies, but what are some of the plans’ strengths and weaknesses?  And, perhaps more importantly, what can other shrinking cities take from these plans when they craft theirs?

 

Rochester’s Project Green examines different housing and demolition scenarios to tackle its housing crisis, provides vacant land strategies, and proposes green corridors that reflect the historic streetcar routes.  Beside the brief mentions of parks, land banking, land leasing for various uses, and energy generation as vacant land strategies, the plan devotes much attention to community gardens.  The green corridors would connect neighborhoods and downtown, enhance recreation opportunities, provide wildlife habitats, and manage stormwater.

 

Leaner, Greener Detroit emphasizes urban form, sustainable transportation, economic development strategies, urban agriculture, and sustainable energy.  The proposed urban form involves enhancing the urban core and reconfiguring the use of land to promote high-density, mix-use and mix-income developments.  Sustainable transportation, which includes transit, bicycle, and pedestrian modes, would link neighborhoods and land uses.  The economic development section lays out a framework for a 10-year economic development plan into three phases that capitalize on human capital, existing and future assets.  The Detroit plan wants to bring to scale urban agriculture so it can provide economic and workforce development, on top of localized food production.  The plan also establishes phases to achieve the urban agriculture goals.

 

It appears the Rochester plan functions like a traditional greening plan, where as the Detroit plan functions more like a comprehensive plan.  That major difference is what separates a narrow-focused traditional plan that addresses last century’s problems from a more comprehensive, integrated plan that tackles 21^st Century challenges of sustainability that all cities will invariably face.  Greening plans should not limit their focus to parks, community gardens, corridor beautification, and single-purpose vacant land strategies.  Food, urban form, transportation, economic development, environmental sustainability, energy, and social issues are critical challenges of the 21^st Century and beyond.  Further, those issues form an intricate web within which any one issue relates with all others.  A more comprehensive greening plan not only tackles the challenges, but it also allows planners and decision makers to see before them the relationships between the challenges and facilitates more integrated planning.

 

Let’s look at some elements of the Rochester plan.  Project Green advocates for community gardens, but it stops short on taking the idea further.  There is no reason why there shouldn’t be a more detailed, longer-term plan on scaling the idea into urban agriculture that serves as part of an economic and workforce development strategy, in addition to localized food production.  The plan does a good job on proposing the historic streetcar lines as future green corridors, but it fails to advance the full potential of the idea.  Future commitments for major green corridors are toward bicycle and pedestrian facilities, aesthetics, and stormwater management, and those are good commitments.  But how do the future urban form and the mix of land uses relate to those corridors?  Should density be clustered around those corridors to maximize the use and investments?  As for economic development, there is not a section that speaks at length about the goals and separates potential strategies into manageable phases.

 

The Rochester plan notes, “It is…an occasion to lay the foundation for the next 175 years.”  There is not much of a foundation with such a conservative, narrow-focused plan that aims not for the stars but for the hills.

 

If we are going to plan for the future, then let it be more comprehensive, integrated, and meaningful planning to tackle the core issues of the 21^st Century and beyond.

 

 

oauvang

 

Read about Leaner, Greener Detroit at http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/0710/0710n_sdat_detroit.cfm.  The Rochester plan, once it has been made public, will have a link from here.

 

Homage to Catalonia: What American cities can learn from Barcelona

In his article for Citiwire (http://citiwire.net/post/1432/), Neal Peirce of the Washington Post Writers Group calls for American cities struggling with the decline of their traditional manufacturing bases to look to Barcelona for inspiration. Where American policy-makers would, according to Peirce, bulldoze the abandoned relics of a city’s industrial past to build a new business park, Barcelona’s politicians instead considered how to transition the former hub of its cotton industry into a knowledge-based economy fit for the 21st century. Recognizing that their ability to attract the kind of talent needed to effect such a transition depended upon the creation of a suitably attractive environment, leaders from both sides of the political divide came together to develop an imaginative array of policies designed to achieve this. They split the city into 100-square meter blocks where decisions required the agreement of 60 per cent of landowners, and offered these landowners the chance to build at a higher density than was normally permitted if they released 30 per cent of their holding for public investment. The publicly-held land could then be used to help create what Peirce describes as ‘a lively urban environment… shaped to include attractive green spaces, restaurants and entertainment, bike lanes, and plentiful public transit’. Such an environment was thought to be preferable to the staid, detached ‘corporate campuses’ and thus far, at least, the Barcelona model appears to be working. Josep Pique is the CEO of 22@Barcelona, the entity created to manage the district, and he is keen to point out that the economic success they aspired for has not come at the cost of social responsibility. According to Pique, social housing and internships for local students are just two of the initiatives that are helping to ensure that those residents who lived in the district before its overhaul will reap the benefits of the regeneration strategy. Peirce certainly seems impressed, as he notes that ‘the physical result is an amazingly eclectic neighborhood’, where the old and new sit ‘cheek by jowl’. So what can America learn from Barcelona? Well, there is no doubt that America is on board with the idea of the knowledge-based economy. Silicon Valley is but the most famous example of the myriad districts around the nation that epitomize the term, and the means to attract the requisite talent are at the very center of Richard Florida’s ‘Creative Class’ theory.  Equally, it would be wrong to suggest that there are not places in America where leaders share similar aspirations to create an attractive, mixed-use environment, often incentivizing developers to help achieve this. For those of us that have learned about planning in the Washington DC area, the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in Arlington County might be the foremost manifestation of such practices. However, such places are the exceptions that prove the rule, and even the most progressive American politicians would surely balk at the prospect of asking developers to give up almost a third of their land holdings in the name of the common good. Peirce sees the American obsession with property rights as a major stumbling block, especially as property owners are also required to pay 50 per cent of street infrastructure improvements. He also questions whether American cities could ever reach the broad political consensus that is required to enact such a bold strategy. On the other hand, he asserts that ‘we Americans can’t keep saying “no” and “can’t” forever’. So, America, maybe it is time that a prominent politician – perhaps one who is au fait with the seminal work of Jane Jacobs, for example – finally had the courage to say “yes, we can” for a change. If such a politician were to be voted into a position of real power, we might really begin to see some progress.

 

Second term a test of a young mayor’s mettle in The Steel City

Following on from my post concerning the challenges facing Dave Bing, former NBA star and now the mayor of Detroit, today I turn my attention to the recently re-elected mayor of Pittsburgh, Luke Ravenstahl. Mayor Ravenstahl was the focus of a recent article in the New York Times, published just before his re-election: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/us/02pittsburgh.html. The article reflects on the challenges facing one of the nation’s youngest mayors (he was just 26 when he first took office, following the death of his predecessor Bob O’ Conner, in 2006). In common with other post-industrial ’shrinking cities’, the main problems faced by Pittsburgh today are the high vacancy rates and the reduced tax base brought about by a population that has halved since the mid 20th century. The New York Times article focuses primarily on the fiscal challenge, as well as a crippling pension deficit that ranks among the worst in the country (for more detail on the pension crisis, see: http://www.postgazette.com/pg/09180/980640-100.stm). According to the article, Mayor Ravenstahl has earned his second term in office, having taken tough action to reduce the fiscal deficit, such as reducing the size of the city’s workforce and improving the efficiency of its snow-removal operations. He is also credited with securing more financial assistance from the state (no easy task, as anyone who followed the fortunes of Baltimore’s fictional Mayor Carcetti in The Wire will testify) and with helping Pittsburgh’s economy to transition from its traditional reliance on the steel industry to a modern, service-based economy built around health, education and ‘green’ businesses. Despite his promising start, the article envisions bigger challenges ahead for Mayor Ravenstahl than just ‘keeping up the good work’. First, he needs to set about reforming the pension system. Second, he needs to build a better relationship with the City Council and the Legislature than has hitherto been the case, else he will not be able to progress the next phase of his fiscal overhaul that involves the introduction of new taxes and fees on universities and hospitals. Mayor Ravenstahl remains one of a select few mayors of large American cities who is currently the ‘right’ side of 30, but by the sound of things, he might have more than just a few gray hairs to show for his efforts to fortify The Steel City by the time the next election comes around in 2013.

 

Shrinking Cities Face 2010 Census with Trepidation

For most Americans, April 15 is dreaded as the IRS tax deadline. But next year, many community officials will be more concerned about a day a few weeks earlier; April 1, 2010 is National Census Day.

The purpose of the decennial census is to count how many people reside in the United States and where they live. The count is then used to determine how federal funds (for infrastructure, schools, vital services, etc.) are distributed, and how many members each state will have in the U.S. House of Representatives.

So there’s lot at stake — and given these tough economic times, communities are even more dependent on federal funds to supplement their dwindling tax bases. (According, the U.S. Census Bureau, a community receives about $1,400 per resident in annual federal funding.)

Officials in ‘Shrinking Cities’ are strategizing to make the most of this next census, and to minimize their population loss since the last count. There was a recent article in the Detroit Free Press about efforts in Detroit to encourage residents to be counted. While some suburban communities in the area are expecting significant increases over the 2000 census, the City of Detroit is anticipating a 13% decrease in population.

The 2010 Census presents big challenges for metro Detroit. Officials worry about finding displaced residents because of home foreclosures and skittish immigrants who have shied away from federal paper work since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks….Only 62% of Detroiters mailed back census forms in 2000, compared with 71% in the state, according to the U.S. Census. With the state’s highest foreclosure rate, Detroit will be undercounted without an aggressive campaign, city officials said.

Detroit Mayor David Bing has begun an aggressive campaign to encourage residents to participate in the census. He’s enlisted volunteers to reach out to traditionally undercounted populations: immigrants, faith-based groups, community leaders, seniors and college campuses.

A few states over, in West Virginia, local officials hope to alleviate population loss in Charleston. The city’s mayor and commissioners of Kanawha County are backing a proposal to create a unified administration – which would save millions through the consolidation of services and increase the state capital’s population to 200,000. Though faced with widespread opposition from local residents, the officials hope that voters would approve the consolidation before the 2010 Census, to preclude Charleston from sinking below its Class I status (granted to cities with a population of at least 50,000) in the next census.

Will these efforts in Michigan and West Virginia be successful? Only time (and the Census) will tell.

 

Is a seven-time NBA All-Star the right choice to rescue Detroit?

In May 2009, the former Detroit Pistons basketball player Dave Bing became Detroit’s Mayor, and his record over the six months that followed was at least enough to convince voters to return him to office in the regularly-scheduled election that took place in November of the same year. He was initially elected on a 15% turnout, a figure that speaks volumes for the disenchantment of those who reside in a city that is generally portrayed as an economic basket-case, challenged only by a post-Katrina New Orleans for the title of the most crisis-ridden, poverty-stricken city in America. Unlike New Orleans, which can attribute a significant part of its current woe to the damage wreaked by one of the most destructive hurricanes in the nation’s history, Detroit’s perilous state cannot be blamed on a natural disaster. Like most major American cities, Detroit lost much of its population and its tax base in the second half of the 20th century, as the suburbs became the favored location for residential, retail and commercial developments. In recent years, the decline of the auto industry has decimated Detroit on an unprecedented scale. Chrysler and General Motors have been bailed out by the federal government and currently seem set for survival, at least, but this era of globalization is likely to prevent them from ever returning to their former glory, and tens of thousands of jobs have already been lost. Detroit’s famous Motor City moniker is a testament to it having put all of its eggs in one basket. I am not sure if, and to what extent, the city’s authorities tried to diversify Detroit’s commercial base in more prosperous times, but the folly of building a city around a single industry is sadly there for all to see. Today, there is little doubt that Detroit requires a dramatic new strategy, and here is Mayor Bing’s Vision for Detroit: http://www.bingformayor.com/vision.asp

In light of such a depressing situation, what chance does a former NBA star with no political experience have of reviving the fortunes of this once great city? From the outset, the jury has been very much out. Guests on NPR - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103845759 – were certainly skeptical, claiming that Bing lacked ideas and that the federal government would not allow him to have any input into the one matter that would affect Detroit’s citizens the most: the auto industry. ESPN, while agreeing that Bing had not laid out a clear agenda for the change he promised, argued that his winners’ mentality was exactly what this city needed to give it a fighting chance of a bright future: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=090430/bing. It would be easy to accuse the ESPN writer, Jamele Hill, of drawing an overly simplistic analogy between the sporting and political arenas, but his analysis runs deeper than that, and around 900,000 Detroiters must pray that Mr. Hill will be proved right.

 

Summary of Related VT Major Paper – “Using Community Gardens to Augment Food Security Efforts in Low-Income Communities”

The topic of community gardens is a great opportunity to link our work on shrinking cities to the capstone work of a fellow classmate in the Virginia Tech MURP program in Blacksburg, Basil Hallberg. He wrote his major paper in May 2009 on urban agriculture, entitled: “Using Community Gardens to Augment Food Security Efforts in Low-Income Communities.”

This is a great accompanying resource for the posts of Lindsay and myself on community gardens. Basil’s paper has more of a focus on health benefits of community gardening and food security that is very interesting. He notes that:

“Thirty-one million Americans live in homes with limited or uncertain access to adequate nutrition (Lawson & Knox, 2002). The same demographic that disproportionably suffers from food insecurity, low income minorities, is also prone to higher rates of diabetes, stroke, asthma, obesity, heart disease, cancer and other chronic health issues.”

He also links the lack of access of people in low-income communities leads to “poor diets which are high in caloric intake but inadequate in nutrients” and therefore connected to obesity and a realm of other health issues. The bulk of the paper is a very comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of urban agriculture and local municipalities role in encouraging and maintaining community gardens. Among a diversity of other issues, he also touches on the benefits of local foods and the empowerment associated with neighborhoods growing their own food.

Basil overviews two case studies, one of which is on the Philadelphia Horticulture Society’s Philadelphia Green program. A city like Cleveland could gain a lot from this program, as Basil summarizes:

“Community gardens clean-up vacant land that would otherwise blight Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. Transforming derelict lots of land into gardens is used as a crime prevention strategy in the city’s neighborhoods. Community gardens help retain and attract residents and business to their locations. Many Philadelphia community gardens are utilized to address food security issues within low-income neighborhoods. Nonetheless, while Philadelphia neighborhoods and communities receive many benefits from community gardens, it is important to recall that they exist as primarily a redevelopment strategy to attain other objectives.”

His emphasis on quantified short-term gains of the Philly Green program that ultimately serve the long-term goals of redevelopment is particularly poignant to shrinking cities.

Should anyone be interested in contacting Basil about his research and expertise in this area let me know and I will connect you!