Shrinking Cities News Round-Up: Cleveland Shrinks, Rochester Downsizes

After a spate of news about Detroit, this edition of the news round-up focuses on three other cities: Cleveland, Rochester and Buffalo:

Cleveland Tops Census’ Shrinking List; Local Columnist Says City is Stabilizing
Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau released population estimates for 2009, showing Cleveland with the largest numerical decline of residents last year – followed by two Michigan cities, Detroit and Flint. According to the Census’ estimate, Cleveland lost 2,658 residents, or nearly 1 percent. But a local columnist at the Cleveland Plain-Dealer points out that the decline is actually about 0.6 percent, indicating that the city’s population may finally be stabilizing.

• Read: Cleveland Tops List of Shrinking Cities
• Read: A Shrinking Cleveland May Have Hit Population Bottom

In New York, Rochester Embraces Downsizing, Buffalo Still Reluctant
Rochester has joined the ranks of fellow shrinking city Detroit, and embraced downsizing. The city has acknowledged its dramatic loss of population, and is now to committed to “consciously and intelligently shrink.” Over the next 20 years, the city will relocate residents to eliminate at least 40 residential blocks, and convert the land into parks, greenways, gardens, and farms. Buffalo – another shrinking city about 70 miles away – is still reluctant to embrace the notion of downsizing.

• Read: Shrinking of Cities Catches Traction

 

Shrinking Cities News Round-Up: New Reports Target Universities in Shrinking Cities and Texas Communities

Two new reports have been added to the burgeoning literature on shrinking cities:

• Growing a University in a Shrinking City – Dr. David Sweet, president of Youngstown University (Ohio), played a critical role in the development of the Youngstown 2010 plan. During the process, thousands of residents and community leaders participated in the visioning and execution of the city’s new master plan.  (To learn more about the planning process, read Austin’s post, Citizens and Shrinking Cities – Youngstown 2010). In this new report, Dr. Sweet shares his experiences in helping to revision the community, and emphasizes the importance of campus-community partnerships.

• Texas Problem Properties Toolkit – For two years, the Community Development Clinic at the University of Texas Law School conducted research on the most effective strategies that cities in Texas, and around the country, are using to combat the problem of vacant and abandoned properties. The group’s research culminated in this toolkit, which outlines a number of strategies for Texas cities including, community engagement, vacant property registration, landbanking, and code enforcement.

 

Shrinking Cities News Round-Up: Downsizing Detroit

Last week, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing spoke about his plan for downsizing the city during an interview with a local radio station, which sparked conversations about the practical and legal implications of downsizing Detroit.

Mayor Talks Downsizing: Mayor Bing announced that his plan will involve relocating residents from desolate neighborhoods to more stable areas of the city. This approach breaks from the city’s past practice of putting resources where the need is greatest, or evenly distributing funds across the city. He said,  “You can’t support every neighborhood …Those communities that are stable, we can’t allow them to go down the tubes.”

• Read: Detroit Mayor Bing emphasizes need to shrink city

Community Group Weighs In: A few days later, the Community Development Advocates of Detroit (CDAD) weighed in on downsizing. CDAD released its proposed framework for how the Mayor’s administration  should downsize the city. The report, Neighborhood Revitalization Strategic Framework, recommends creating eleven categories for development – ranging from traditional residential areas that preserve older single-family homes, to naturescape areas that convert vacant lots into low-maintenance greenspace, to urban homesteads with older houses on large lots where many city services would no longer be provided. CDAD envisions a Detroit that is more sustainable, with a focus on social equity, environmental integrity, and economic prosperity.

• Read: Community group releases its downsized vision of Detroit

Local Attorney Discusses Legality of Downsizing: Mayor Bing’s downsizing plan will likely face legal challenges, namely the legality of cutting off city services to particular neighborhoods and the use of eminent domain. Yet local eminent domain attorney Alan Ackerman says the downsizing plan is constitutional – because it’s not an economic issue, but rather one of public safety.

Given a 2006 amendment to the state constitution, local governments looking to seize a property must prove that it is blighted and will be for public use. Ackerman believes that Detroit can convincingly make this argument. “Government is there to give basic services to the citizenry. Detroit cannot do that with the present plans of where buildings do and do not exist, he said. “Therefore, to properly apportion police and other public safety you have to remove that house because it blights the rest of the city.

• Read: Is Detroit Mayor Dave Bing’s plan to relocate residents legal? Eminent domain attorney says it is constitutionally sound, necessary

 

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?

 

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.

 

The Urban Orchard — a Strategy for Vacant Properties and Beyond

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on a news article about neighbors in Flint, Michigan who transformed a parcel of vacant lots into a vegetable garden and fruit orchard.

Such neighborhood gardens are a popular strategy for improving vacant lots in ‘Shrinking Cities.’ Though in most distressed areas, these are perceived as temporary uses. For instance in this Flint story, the Genesee County Land Bank gave permission for this garden and orchard to be planted, but did not allocate this land for permanent community agriculture use. Because, conceivably, in few years, there will be interest to redevelop the land, and these neighbors will have to hang up their gardening gloves.

Yet there’s a burgeoning consensus that growing food within city limits is always a good thing – in shrinking and growing cities alike – for a number of reasons. In her article Small, Green and Good, Catherine Tumber synthesizes these arguments for local food production. She writes,

As Michael Pollan demonstrates in his best-selling The Omnivore’s Dilemma, agribusiness puts down an enormous carbon footprint. Sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry not only produce more nutritious food and less cruelty to animals, they are also far less dependent on petroleum for long-distance transportation, fertilizer, and neurotoxic pesticides (not to mention antibiotics). Building on the work of organic farmers and environmental activists since the ’70s, Pollan’s call for relocalizing agriculture coincides with rising alarm about the perils of climate change and dependence on foreign oil. Even the United Nations, which has long embraced agribusiness as the key to famine prevention, is beginning to recognize the role of sustainable, localized practices in food security.

So I think this Flint neighborhood has the right idea – pairing the garden and orchard. The garden is a great short-term greening tool and has helped to bring community together. And the fruit orchard is a more lasting approach to urban greening. If planted around the perimeter of these lots or in small clusters, these trees (or at least most of them) can remain even if the lot is redeveloped.

Mature fruit trees add character, provide healthy food and shade, and are relatively easy to maintain. Communities around the country are realizing the benefits of urban fruit trees. In Berkeley, California “urban gleaners” (or fruit philanthropists) pick fruit from neighbors’ yards to donate to local food banks. And around the country, community fruit exchanges are being established where neighbors can share their figs, lemons, and persimmons with each other.

I hope that the pairing of a garden and orchard becomes an increasingly popular strategy for dealing with vacant properties in other ‘Shrinking Cities.’ So even in instances where the garden is seen as a temporary use, the trees can feed and shade the community for many years to come.

 

Flint Garden Sprouts More Than Vegetables

There was a great story in The New York Times last week about neighbors in Flint, Michigan who transformed vacant lots into a vegetable garden and fruit orchard. And in turn, this garden has inspired them to revive their community.

The article touches upon several themes related to a ‘Shrinking City.’

Loss of manufacturing jobs – Flint suffered the loss of 70,000 jobs at General Motors; presently the city’s unemployment rate is about 25%.

Landbanking – the Genesee County Land Bank acquires foreclosed properties in Flint and throughout the rest of the county, then coordinates the reuse of abandoned buildings and vacant lots. In 2005, the Land Bank gave permission for this garden to be planted.

Returning land to productive use – neighbors removed litter and debris, and cleared the land to make way for the garden. According to the article, “The [garden] is really 10 contiguous lots where a row of houses once stood.”

Sustainability – The garden has improved the food security of this neighborhood by providing fresh, locally grown produce. Those who tend the garden reap the harvest, and they often also give food to neighbors in need. And now, Harry Ryan – who spearheaded the garden effort – is looking to further green the neighborhood by building a power-generating windmill in the garden.

Patchwork of decline and growth – Like many shrinking cities, some areas of Flint are thriving. Downtown Flint – just five miles away – has regained its vitality with several new commercial and residential developments.

All-in-all, it’s a heart-warming story about how a garden is helping to reverse the cycle of decline this neighborhood. The garden has rekindled a sense of community pride; neighbors have since pitched in to mow unkempt lawns and unearth sidewalks, because as one resident put it, “It needs to be done.”

Read the full story here, and also check out the related slide show.

 

Don’t Give Up the Ship: Cleveland, Ohio

While in Cleveland last weekend, with fellow classmates from the Shrinking Cities Studio, I relied on the Erie Island Coffee Co. for my morning cup of coffee. And printed on the cup sleeve at Erie is this quote, “Don’t Give Up the Ship. – Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry (1813).” In my opinion, this rallying cry sums up the visit to Cleveland quite nicely.

The purpose of the trip was to see a ‘Shrinking City’ first-hand, and learn about the efforts underway to proactively address Cleveland’s problems with home foreclosures and blighted and vacant properties.

On Friday, we met with people in the planning, community development, and legal fields – all of whom are well versed in the dynamics and needs of a Shrinking City, and are committed to improving the plight of Cleveland.

But I wondered if this understanding and commitment exists beyond this circle of practitioners? I found an answer, the very next morning, in the local newspaper.

There was an article in Saturday’s (10/17) edition of The Plain Dealer about the installation of Ronald Berkman, the sixth president of Cleveland State University (CSU is located in a central Cleveland neighborhood, close to downtown). According to the article, in his address Berkman vowed to not only transform the university but also the surrounding neighborhood. Specifically he said:

“Cleveland State is in and of this city, and the connection and bonds between the two of them must be strengthened…I envision a day soon when faculty and staff will come to live in this neighborhood, send their children to school here and together build a new, vibrant, neighborhood in the city of Cleveland.”

Though I can’t presume that Berkman’s remarks are representative of all local leaders, it’s a promising declaration from one of the city’s anchor institutions. I hope he sticks to it, and that others follow suit. Each statement like this bolsters the work of the folks we met with last weekend, and it says to larger community, “Clevelanders, Don’t Give Up the Ship!”