Over the break I was in Cleveland, OH. The current population there is just under half a million people. In *1950* the population there was nearly a million. Rather than growing over the last 60 years, Cleveland’s population has shrunk by almost half. The result is a ghost city — it looks like zombies have eaten the inhabitants, leaving the infrastructure (including a lot of really incredible architecture, and a very nice light rail system).
We often think of cities as always getting bigger, but that’s not the case. Patterns of production change over the years, and the population changes with them. The website www.shrinkingcities.com has a lot of resources on this topic. Please have a look at some of the pages there to get a sense of the situation.
Here are two readings for you: A blog post from the Economist on Buffalo, and another analysis of Buffalo, which includes more of its history, from City Journal.
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Obviously I’m posting these really late; I’ve been pretty sick. Try to have a look at them before class tonight if you can. We’ll keep talking about shrinking cities next Tuesday, and compare them to the very different situation of “maximum” cities, such as Mumbai or Mexico City or Tokyo.
There is no doubt Detroit will be one of these “shrinking cities.” With all the Detroit automakers in trouble, people are out of work and for those who are able to leave; they will have no choice but to go elsewhere.
I find Edward Glaeser’s analysis of the decline of Buffalo in City Journal to be very striking. It is interesting how he says “the declining areas become magnets for poor people attracted by cheap housing”. This suggests that once poverty hits, it then beocmes more severe due to the lack of jobs and increase of low-income families. He says that this in turn “drives up the public expenditures while doing little to expand the local tax base”. This causes me to wonder what will it take to turn this situation around. What will create a larger middle class or encourage the middle class to live in Buffalo? Even if the government does fund more programs for the people and not for the place, how long would it take to foster education and increase money earned by the people of Buffalo as a whole? It kind of seems as though Buffalo is a lost cause…
What’s interesting to me is what some not so impoverished communities are doing to help without even knowing it. I live on the lower east side and am in pretty close proximity to chinatown. I do a lot of my shopping and drinking down there because it’s cheap. Last weekend at a bar the current state of Detroit came up in conversation. And I was told by the bartender that there’s been a quiet migration of relatively large groups of Chinese moving into some of the now super-cheap areas of Detroit. I would personally be scared to move into such an area alone with what the state of the local industry crash has done to it, but I would definitely feel a lot more comfortable if I were to move with a large Russian or a large Jewish group behind me. Safety and power in numbers.
Like the article outlined of the problems facing buffalo’s growth is too much help from government housing projects and funds used to build more home in upstate buffalo. The more homes they build the sharper realestate will fall and that can be credited to our own government. since home values is probably one of the most important aspects of a persons finance, money should have been put to more useful areas such as revolutionizing transportation. A new idea proposed to president obama that would fall under his 8billion dollar stimulus set aside to modernize US passenegr rail systems would biuld a high speed train connecting buffalo to albany. the train would benefit all fo upstate and could provide enough incentive for people to move into the cheaper housing that could be found in buffalo. The train could create tens off thousands of jobs as well in the process. So i do believe there might still be a chance for buffalo to become a great city once again.
I think city shrinking was temporary, every body know how important the cars are to human beings, every body know how flourishing the Detroit was when the economy was still good. The economy will be good again, just a question about time, so the Detroit will be good again. Probably now it is a good time to invest in Detroit, you will earn a lot from this investment in the future, this might be the reason why some chinese were moving there.
it’s interesting it’s so different about city shrinking from America and China. after 911, lots of American move to countryside from city, and they would like to take the train to get work,,,but in China,which is developing so fast country, many countryside people’s dream are that go to city because they believe that city could give them more opportunities to success. so the city in China is expanding so fast,,,
This is a very interesting article, it shows how too much reliance upon one industry within a city can be beneficial, but only for so long. Backed by historical evidence, it is likely that cities which even today depend highly on a single industry to support its economic and population status are likely to face the scenario of shrinking. Seattle in the early 1980s was a victim of this problem. Boeing, the leading airplane manufacturer at the time was based out of Seattle, Washington. It was also the leading industry in the city and a huge population was formed on the foundations of the company growth. However due to economic downturn and airplane industry suffrage, boeing had to contract its company operations. As this leading industry was shrinking, so was the city’s economy and the cities population. Many today anticipate that a similar situation might also be carried on with the auto industry in Detroit, for the recessionary economy and the collapse of the banking system is not going to bail any flawed industry standing.