Case Study Summaries

The analytical framework of the shrinking cities project is empirically based on case study analysis. Ten different ‘lenses’ or approaches are applied to 30 cities, metropolitan regions or suburbs across 10 different countries to understand different types of city-shrinkage and the role that different approaches, policies and strategies have in the re-generation of shrinking cities. In this way case studies will inform both a rich diversity of analytical perspectives and country based study of the challenges faced by shrinking cities.

The role of innovation will be analysed in five Australian cities by Cristina Martinez-Fernandez and Tong Wu of University of Western Sydney. Three of these cases, Whyalla, Broken Hill and Mt Isa, are mining towns with close to 30% population loss over the last 20 years. Two other cases, the cities of Newcastle and Wollongong, explore the economic decline of the steel industry and their integration with the Sydney metropolitan region. Innovation is now recognised as the engine of growth in OECD countries and as a critical component of knowledge-based economies. These case studies envisage understanding the role that innovation and systems of innovation have in re-generation of shrinking cities.

The role of environmental sustainability issues in the shrinking city will be analysed by Helen Mulligan of University of California at Berkeley. Four case studies will analyse the European perspective with the cities of Newark in the UK and Gelsenkirchen in Germany; and the North American perspective with the cities of Pittsburgh and San Francisco. The study will focus on scales above that of the individual building; that is, from the city block to the urban region.  Policy approaches will be analysed in the case studies to understand why sustainability issues have been targeted as part of urban regeneration; what measures and strategies were put in place; and outcomes of current initiatives.

The role that culture and creativity can play for a more sustainable urban regeneration will be analyzed by Jasmin Aber of University of California at Berkeley. This research aims to analyze – a comparative study – strategies and good practices in ‘culture-led regeneration’ and ‘creative cities” through case studies – cities that best exemplifying successful strategies in balancing the physical, social and economic challenges – in shrinking cities. They are cities that have managed to re-invent themselves and now not only offer an enhanced quality of life to their communities/new communities, engaging people to produce, organize, experience, consume, and express and contributing but also to economic growth. The contribution of creativity, art & culture and cutting-edge technologies, the role of public-private partnerships, creative industries and their potential for job creation in the fields of architecture, audio-visual, fine arts the arts market, performing arts and entertainment, graphic arts, fashion, design, literature and publishing, multimedia and software, music and advertisement, will be explored with the analysis of the cities of Manchester/ Glasgow, St Louis, Pittsburgh, San Francisco/ San Jose, Montreuil in Paris, Bienna, Bilbao and New York. The study will draw conclusions on strategic directions and areas of policy attention in relation to culture-led regeneration of cities.

Information and communications technologies (ICTs), construed either as evolutionary or revolutionary and their influence on metropolitan change will be analysed from two urban research traditions by Ivonne Audirac of Florida State University. The hypothesis is that synergies between ICT and our car, truck, and airplane society may be an accelerating thrust behind well-established urban decentralization and deconcentration trends. Furthermore, a review of research on ICT-intensive firms, assumed to be the "glue" of urban agglomerations, will discuss metropolitan dispersion and regional de-concentration as factors also occurring in this sector. Although both centrifugal and centripetal forces are simultaneously shaping the form of the information age metropolis, rather than often augured central city renaissance or absolute urban dissolution, the resulting spatially-distributed-network pattern is polycentric and evolving into a regional constellation of ICT-agglomerations interconnected via high-speed transportation and digital networks (Audirac, 2005). The increasingly spread-out metropolitan form embodies the time-sensitive logic of the information age. However, such logic poses serious challenges to Smart Growth’s metropolitan agenda. The study will further analyse these factors in the Texas Dallas-Fort Worth region.

The role of land use and the interdependence of shrinking and growing in the US will be analysed by Karina Pallagst of University of California at Berkeley. One hypothesis to be investigated is that the phenomenon of shrinking cities is not only related to the well-known post-industrial ‘Rust-Belt’ examples; other areas are affected as well. A second hypothesis is that transformation processes occur within the sphere of land use; shrinking and growing are processes that can be observed in a parallel mode. Due to the overall population growth triggered by immigration, many cities in the US have to provide for redevelopment in shrinking areas and growth-related development at the same time. The study will choose three cases of shrinking cities in the US, Pittsburgh, Youngstown and San Jose. Each of these cases represents a different path of shrinkage and of the related strategies. The study will discuss urban, regional, state and federal policies and programs in terms of land use sufficient to steer the development of shrinking cities in order to achieve a well-balanced development. The study will also critically analyse planning and land use instruments to achieve ‘shrinking smart’.

The role of transport and industry infrastructure will be analysed by Sergio Moraes of Itajai Valley University in Brazil. The study will focus on a metropolitan region, analysing the municipal district of Sao Caetano do Sul, part of the Metropolitan area of Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo metropolitan region presents tensions of shrinking and growing in different parts of the region. The district of Sao Caetano do Sul benefited from a strong industrialisation process due to the presence of the railroad connecting Sao Paulo to the port of Santos. In the 50’s, federal policies contributed to define the district as an important industrial pole. But the building of a new highway in the neighbour district of San Bernardo do Campo resulted in the transfer of many industries to an industrial park located along this major infrastructure. The economic decline had devastating effects in Sao Caetano in terms of physical decay and social problems. At the same time, the district is experiencing a process of gentrification and an increase in density due to the proximity of Sao Paulo and its highly competitive land market. These various trends are challenging for the revitalization strategies that the municipality is aiming to implement.

The role of community involvement in regeneration strategies in coal mining shrinking towns will be analysed by Dong-Chun Shin of the Ministry of Construction and Transportation of the Republic of Korea. The study will analyse a cluster of four coal-mining cities located in geographical proximity in the Taeback Mountain Range Region. The region is distinctive because the Korean coal industry has a relative short period of history of less than a century, from the discovery of mines to its growth and decline. This study will also deal with the policy-making process, from changing domestic and international energy environment, to the rationalization policy of coal industry as well as revitalization strategies. While planning in Korea traditionally has taken place at the central or local government levels, in this case study the role of community involvement in the decision-making process and the dialogue established with government officials and agencies will be analysed. The study will also compare key findings with other coal-mining cities such as Yubari in Japan, Bochum in Germany and McDowell in the USA and provide an assessment of regeneration strategies.

The case of shrinking suburbs and core cities in large metropolitan regions will be analysed by Sylvie Fol of Paris X-Nanterre University and Emmanuèle Cunningham-Sabot of Rennes II University. The French case studies will be located in the first ring of Paris suburbs and a comparison will be made with the cities of Saint Etienne and Glasgow. This part of Paris's suburbs developed since the late 19^th century and was characterised by a strong industrial infrastructure and a numerous working class. Saint Etienne and Glasgow were renown as famous industrial cities before the 19^th century, and have kept this image of a working class population, although most of the major industries have disappeared. During the 1960’s, the post-industrial transformation of the Paris metropolitan region had important effects, most of the cities of the first suburban ring starting to lose population as well as employment.[1] The study will focus on three  cities: Saint_Denis, Montreuil and Issy-les-Moulineaux. In Glasgow the down-turn occurred in the late 1960's whereas Saint-Etienne's diminishing population became worrying for the local government in 2000, with the city's population numbering less than 200.000 inhabitants, as revealed by the last census. The ways local governments reacted to the process of shrinkage of these cities, the strategies, measures and means they put in place and their effects on urban and social development will be analysed.

Urban shrinkage in European post-socialist cities with serious industrial regression will be analysed by Thorsten Wiechmann of the Institute of Ecological and Regional Development of Dresden in Germany. 15 years after the political changes of 1989/90, many cities in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) still suffer under a double transformation pressure: post-socialist and post-fordist transformation. In the course of the changes of 1989/90 these cities were suddenly confronted with a highly competitive global market. As a consequence, the economic bases of these cities collapsed. The study will compare two cities: Leipzig and Dresden, both located in the federal state of Saxony in Eastern Germany. Here, for the first time in modern urban planning practice, planners disengage from the illusion of new growth and aspire to conduct a pragmatic deconstruction. The study will inform of the main driving forces for the demographic patterns in the two case studies since 1990. The study will also analyse the effects on these cities of different planning approaches or the lack of planning.