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This article concerns the change in urban populations of some locations such as Industrial of "boomtowns," where the population of some cities has relocated to the suburban areas. Cities contract when residents flee urban congestion for more open spaces. (See "redlining"). Surprisingly, the number of shrinking cities has increased faster in the last 50 years than the number of expanding ones.

Global context

The current population of the world is 6.5 billion people. Currently about 3 billion live in cities. By 2030, population in cities is expected to be 4.1 billion.^{[citation needed]} Though some cities are continuing to attract residents, others are losing residents at varying rates. Saskia Sassen's "global cities" theory forecasts these urban "winners" and "losers": the winners being those cities with agglomerated financial and specialized services and the losers being those with outdated industrial infrastructure and manufacture economies.^[1]

In the last 50 years, about 370 cities with more than 100,000 residents have undergone population losses of more than 10%. More than 25 percent of the depopulating cities are in the United States, and most of those are in the midwest.^{[citation needed]}

Challenges of Shrinking Cities

Infrastructure- Among many challenges facing Shrinking Cities, infrastructure management is among the most intractable. Shrinking cities were once more dense, industrious places requiring vast infrastructure to support the resulting population and economic activity. However, they now face a vastly reduced population. What remains is the legacy of an infrastructure meant for a different era - namely one with a larger population.

Overcapacity in infrastructure can severely strain the fiscal situation of any cities, most particular those who are already in dire straits. The problem is relatively straightforward; a declining city with aging infrastructure has fewer people to share the cost resulting in a higher per capita cost to the residents who remain. Since infrastructure costs are usually fixed, reductions in demand do not reduce costs.

The dispersed and sparsely populated neighborhoods that inevitably characterize shrinking cities are a major source of fiscal distress. Services must still be provided to fewer and fewer citizens over a larger geographic distance, once again raising the per capita cost. This is an instance illustrating how a lack of population density can be a strain on already stretched municipal budgets. “At the neighbourhood level, residential density is directly linked to expenditures on neighbourhood infrastructure. The higher the density, the lower the per capita length of collector roads, water distribution lines or sewer collection lines. Below a density of 40 dwellings per hectare net urban land network-related per capita costs increase exponentially” ^[2]

Some policymakers have suggested that such neighborhoods might be consolidated at a higher density to increase their ability to pay for the required municipal services. Cities such as Flint, MI have explored this option, yet it is currently largely in a preliminary stage. Since such a policy has yet to be formally implemented in the United States , the preliminary evidence regarding is efficacy is mixed at best. Decommissioning public infrastructure is an elaborate, expensive process that requires a great deal of study. Currently, many infrastructure management professionals believe it more sensible to incur current maintenance cost at some minimal level rather than removing infrastructure that may later need to be reinstated. Since future growth can be hard to predict, this is a pragmatic argument that can only be countered with detailed research.

However, such detailed research regarding infrastructure management in shrinking cities is not widespread at this point. Kent State University’s Sustainable Infrastructure in Shrinking Cities report consistently affirms this point. Simply put, far more research is needed before we can confidently recommend policy. As the report concludes:

“When we began this research, we hoped to find a technology or strategy that would enable substantial cost savings by decommissioning large components of costly infrastructure that were no longer necessary due to declining population. We found no such thing.” ^[3]

List of shrinking cities with growing suburbs

The following cities have lost at least 20 percent of their population, from a peak of over 100,000, since 1950.

United States

See also

• Gentrification
• Rust belt
• Urban renewal

References

1. ^ Sassen, Saskia (2000) Cities in a World Economy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2. ^ (Schiller, G (2007). Demographic Change and Infrastructural Cost – A Calculation Tool for Regional Planning. Paper proposed for SUE-MoT Conference 2007, Glasgow “Economics of Urban Sustainability”, Leibniz Institute of Ecological and Regional Development. Retrieved from http://download.sue-mot.org/Conference-2007/Papers/Schiller.pdf
3. ^ Hoornbeek, J (2009). Literature Review. Sustainable Infrastructure in Shrinking Cities, Kent State University, Center for Public Administration and Public Policy and the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. Retrieved from http://www.cudc.kent.edu/shrink/Images/neorc_infrastructure_report.pdf

External links

• Shrinking Cities international Research Network
• Shrinking Cities Exhibition
• Shrinking Cities in USA
• Interview with German expert Wolfgang Kil on Shrinking Cities in Germany
• Professor Hollander's research on shrinking cities
• Small, Green, and Good: The Role of Neglected Cities in a Sustainable Future, a Boston Review article which argues that shrinking cities can be revived in a future concerned with environmentalism, in particular by using urban agriculture to provide local food sources
• Shrinking Cities Institute