What city would admit to shrinking?

[miriamjoyce]

For those with an interest in cities (especially Rust Belt cities) or planning or advocacy for low-income people or affordable housing I have an article in the summer issue of Shelterforce on the Shrinking Cities "movement":

"No community developer likes to be told that the housing she just built was "not doing anybody a favor." But

Comments

[acer_genus]

It's a pretty amazing idea. I like it. I wonder if it's appropriate for Albany. We've lost an lot of population over the last 50 years.

[miriamjoyce]

I think we could have a lot to learn from the people working on this, but I doubt that the most extreme stuff would be very relevant here. As much abandonment as some of our neighborhoods face, they're nothing like Youngstown. I don't think we have anywhere that would be a candidate for actually taking off line. And I think we have a better chance for many reasons of actually growing again than some of these cities. (Though perhaps not to our former peak.)

However, something as basic as a side lot program could be really useful here.

[thatpoetrykid]

Youngstown is one of the places you can buy houses really cheap!

Utica's population has been rising for a few years from 58,000 when we moved here to 62,000 now. That's after over 40 years of decline. There are still hundreds of empty houses.