Shrinking smart urban redevelopment and shrinkage in youngstown ohio[2][1]

Urban Geography

ISSN: 0272-3638 (Print) 1938-2847 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rurb20

Shrinking ‘Smart’?: Urban Redevelopment and Shrinkage in Youngstown, Ohio James Rhodes & John Russo To cite this article: James Rhodes & John Russo (2013) Shrinking ‘Smart’?: Urban Redevelopment and Shrinkage in Youngstown, Ohio, Urban Geography, 34:3, 305-326, DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2013.778672 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.778672

Published online: 13 May 2013.

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Urban Geography, 2013 Vol. 34, No. 3, 305–326, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2013.778672

SHRINKING ‘SMART’?: URBAN REDEVELOPMENT AND SHRINKAGE IN YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO

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James Rhodes1 Department of Sociology University of Manchester Manchester, United Kingdom John Russo Center for Working-Class Studies Warren P. Williamson College of Business Administration Youngstown State University

Abstract: This article analyzes the impact of the much-heralded Youngstown 2010 Plan and the enacting of a program of “controlled” or “managed” shrinkage. It is argued that while the program of redevelopment has had an impact on Youngstown and its national image, it represents an exclusionary project that has centered on redeveloping downtown areas and neglected many city neighborhoods which continue to experience high levels of unemployment, vacancy, and crime. The analysis is situated in relation to the contemporary literature on “shrinking cities.”

Youngstown’s experience raises critical questions regarding the nature of the challenges facing shrinking cities, the constraints on actions available to them due to state and federal funding, and the coherence of the concept of “smart shrinkage.” [Key words: shrinking cities, deindustrialization, neoliberal urbanism]

INTRODUCTION In 2005, Youngstown, Ohio launched its citywide Youngstown 2010 Plan, which drew quick, mostly positive media attention. Dozens of media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), PBS, National Public Radio (NPR), and CNN as well as many regional newspapers published stories on the Plan. Much of the press coverage included suggestions that other “shrinking cities” should imitate Youngstown’s model. In December 2006, The New York Times Magazine listed the Plan as one of the 74 best ideas in America in the 6th Annual Year in Ideas awards (Lanks, 2006). The Youngstown 2010 Plan attracted widespread praise from planning organizations and think tanks as well, for both its vision and its attempts at community engagement in the planning process. It received awards from the American Planning Association and plaudits from the Brookings Institution and PolicyLink.

The attention centered around a central theme of the 2010 Plan: Youngstown as a shrinking city. The Plan acknowledged that the city, which had lost more than half of its population between 1950 and 2010, could never expect to return to its former size. It

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Sherry Linkon, Don Mitchell, Ian Beniston, and Phil Kidd.Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts.

1 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to James Rhodes, Department of Sociology, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom; email: james.rhodes@ manchester.ac.uk

305 © 2013 Taylor & Francis

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proposed to reduce the imprint of the city and its infrastructure, principally through demolition, and to transform abandoned lots into green space. In the U.S., where dominant approaches to redevelopment are inherently bound to ideas of both economic and demographic growth, Youngstown’s strategy of planning to shrink went against wellestablished orthodoxies. Indeed, Wiechmann and Pallagst (2012, p. 275) go as far as to call the approach “almost revolutionary,” while noting that “the shrinking cities phenomenon represents a challenge to the principles upon which urban policy has traditionally been based” (ibid., p. 264). As they suggest (2012, p. 264), a vision for shrinking cities might consist of strategies, “to depopulate rundown neighborhoods, to regreen once built-up areas, and to adopt economic development plans that emphasize controlled shrinkage in smaller but nevertheless liveable” configurations. U.S. cities adopting the shrinking city concepts include, among others, Buffalo and Rochester, New York; Detroit, Michigan; Dayton, Ohio; and St. Louis, Missouri.

Planning to shrink may have been revolutionary, but what happens when an American city tries to put those ideas into practice? While the media and urban studies scholars around the country have embraced and in many cases begun to adopt the idea promoted by the Youngstown 2010 Plan, much less attention has been granted to the extent and nature of the changes that resulted from Plan, or from the use of the shrinking cities model elsewhere (Schatz, 2008; Hollander, 2009; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012). Drawing on archival research of media coverage relating to the 2010 Plan, primary sources, and regular attendance at neighborhood and community meetings between March and October 2010, this paper offers a critical analysis of the application of the Youngstown 2010 Plan. It reveals the challenges involved in implementing this strategy, especially the effects of inherent conflicts between business and neighborhood interests, and among local, regional, and national policies and conditions.

ADDRESSING SHRINKING CITIES While population growth has often been taken as an indicator of the relative health and prosperity of a city, urban shrinkage has become a focus of intense debate and scrutiny over the past decade (Rybczynski and Linneman, 1999; Popper and Popper, 2002; Bontje, 2004; Oswalt, 2006; Hall and Hall, 2008; Pallagst et al., 2008; Weichmann, 2008; Hollander, 2009; Hollander et al., 2009; Shetty, 2009; Pallagst, 2010; Hollander and Nemeth, 2011; Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012; for a perspective on declining suburbs, see Anacker and Morrow-Jones, 2011). Significant attention has been paid to the phenomenon in the United States, where “the litany of shrinking cities is a veritable alphabet soup, as zip codes in cities such as Akron, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit have succumbed to massive depopulation in recent years” (Hollander and Nemeth, 2011, p. 350; see also Mikelbank, 2011).

Researchers have also traced the pattern globally, especially in Japan and Europe.

While there is some variance in what constitutes “shrinkage” (Shetty, 2009), the Shrinking Cities International Research Network (SCiRN), founded in 2004, offers a widely adopted definition: “densely populated urban area with a minimum population of 10,000 residents that has faced population losses in large parts for more than two years and is undergoing economic transformations with some symptoms of a structural crisis” (cited in Hollander and Nemeth, 2011, p. 352). Urban shrinkage itself is not a

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new phenomenon. Yet interest in the process has grown considerably, as shrinkage becomes a more widespread, enduring pattern and as developers and planners struggle to find appropriate responses. Critics recognize that shrinkage is not simply a temporary or local phenomenon, but may in fact indicate more entrenched, global changes in contemporary urbanism. Martinez-Fernandez et al. (2012), for example, recognize the need “to envisage urban shrinkage as a durable, structural component of urban development” (ibid., p. 218). Indeed, emerging data on the breadth of urban shrinkage reaffirms such thinking. One estimate suggests that, as of 2006, around the world, 25% of all cities exceeding 100,000 in population were in decline (Hollander and Nemeth, 2011, p. 350). The EU Urban Audit found that between 1996 and 2001, 57% of cities and 54% of larger urban zones lost population (Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012, p.264).

Within the expanding scholarly literature on shrinking cities, some have offered theories that move away from viewing shrinkage as simply the result of “natural” urban ecological processes. Instead, arguments have located a range of factors that underpin the shrinking cities phenomenon, including natural disasters, declining birth rates (particularly in Europe) (Pallagst et al., 2008; Wiechmann, 2008; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012), suburbanization (particularly in the U.S.) (Pallagst et al., 2008; Beauregard, 2012; Hollander and Nemeth, 2011; Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012; Weichmann and Pallagst, 2012), as well as deindustrialization and economic restructuring within an age of globalization and the emergence of new spatialities of capitalist production (Beauregard, 2012; Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012). For others, urban shrinkage is a manifestation of inherent “crisis” tendencies of capitalism and processes of “creative destruction” (Smith et al., 2001; Martinez-Fernandez, 2012). The existing literature suggests that shrinkage results from complex interactions of an array of forces. As Mallach (2011, p. 370) argues, population loss is “a product of the working of multiple economic, social, and spatial correlates of shrinking, linked to suburbanization, deindustrialization, migration, as such cities and residents become more marginalized in their relationship to labor markets.”

Despite “very different characteristics depending on national, regional and local contexts” (Pallagst, 2010, pp. 3–4), shrinking cities face several shared social and economic problems. Perhaps the most central, but not always fully understood consequence, is the need to attract private and public investment and to reposition the city in relation to a restructuring global economy. Shrinkage is not simply a manifestation of economic restructuring and the uneven spaces of capitalist production (Harvey, 1989); it is also a process that in and of itself produces a range of social problems. Most visibly, urban shrinkage leads to vacancy in commercial and residential properties, spreading abandonment, blight, and deterioration (Rybczynski and Linneman, 1999; Hollander, 2009, 2011; Hollander and Nemeth, 2011; Mallach, 2011; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012). While vacancy and abandonment create aesthetic and environmental concerns for neighborhoods, they also undermine property values, neighborhood confidence, and the availability of amenities and services, while exacerbating crime, illegal dumping, and the risk of arson. Vacancy and abandomnent also weaken neighborhoods’ ability to attract investment and residents (Greenburg et al., 1990; Accordino and Johnson, 2000; Cohen, 2001; Hollander, 2009; Kildee et al., 2009; Mallach, 2012). Population decline also creates infrastructural problems, as cities struggle to maintain an oversized, and often aging, city

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infrastructure even as population loss, economic disinvestment, and declining property values lead to a declining tax base (Rybczynski and Linneman, 1999; Bontje, 2004; Hollander et al., 2009; Hollander, 2011; Mallach, 2012). Additionally, as Rybczynski and Linneman (1999) note, declining population density also makes it difficult to retain businesses, services, and amenities, negatively affecting the social fabric of a city and its quality of life. The net result is the entrenchment of inequality as poorer, usually “nonwhite” residents suffer disproportionately through “reduced income and employment opportunities, inadequate municipal services and deteriorating infrastructure, and the manifold harms arising from living in proximity to abandoned houses, contaminated vacant industrial sites, and overgrown vacant lots” (Mallach, 2011, pp. 371–372).

Cities have responded to these problems in various ways, according to their specific local contexts and the broader state and federal government contexts that shape policy and funding for urban development (Power et al., 2010; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012).

Despite this diversity, a common suite of measures have been adopted that attempt to address the economic, physical, and social aspects associated with industrial decline and urban transformation (Power et al., 2010). Such measures adopted by “declining” cities include housing demolition and blight reduction, historic preservation, cultural regeneration, urban greening, downtown revitalization, economic development, and initiatives promoting community values and cohesion (Shetty, 2009; Power et al., 2010; MartinezFernandez et al., 2012; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012). In their comparative study of approaches to shrinkage in the U.S. and Germany, Wiechmann and Pallagst (2012) show that redevelopment efforts have focused on two main areas: economic redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization.

Cities have sought to attract economic investment through a process of rebranding and reinvention, making themselves more attractive to business through the deployment of strategies such as reducing taxes, subsidizing private development, decontaminating brownfield sites, targeted place-marketing, developing new industries, and enhancing existing industrial clusters. However, the problems posed by shrinkage have also meant that cities have had to address high rates of vacancy and neighborhood deterioration, relying largely upon strategies such as reinvestment in neighborhoods, demolition, and the curtailment of new housing construction. Youngstown and its 2010 Plan reveal the inherent tensions between the pursuit of economic development and neighborhood stabilization. Drawing on Savitch and Kantor’s (2002) distinction between “market”- and “social”- oriented urban redevelopment, it will be argued that the lack of state and federal support for shrinking cities such as Youngstown leads city administrations to aggressively focus on the attraction of private investment to the relative neglect of issues of neighborhood recovery. Indeed, this reflects more broadly the ways in which the ascendance of urban neoliberalism, characterized by the withdrawal of state and federal monies for urban centers, shapes and constrains the suite and scale of interventions available to city officials. Indeed, our analysis illustrates how the existing orientation of many state and federal funding streams toward economic growth and construction is ill-equipped to provide public policy solutions to the types of problems facing cities such as Youngstown. The case of Youngstown reveals the particularly damaging effects of this in the context of deindustrialization, depopulation, and urban decline; the frantic pursuit of elusive private capital is ineffectual in tackling the systemic dimensions of urban disinvestment.

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Despite the widespread acknowledgment of shrinkage as a long-term, global pattern, Wiechmann and Pallagst (2012) observe that many cities retain a commitment to growth as a remedy, particularly in the U.S. In Pittsburgh, for instance, they note that the city’s approach to neighborhood development, downtown revitalization, and economic diversification reflects its pursuit of the urban growth paradigm (ibid., p. 274). As Wiechmann and Pallagst (ibid., p. 275) observe, Youngstown’s approach marks a shift: “For the first time, a shift in paradigm is about to occur leading from growth to ‘shrinking smart.’ The city is the first US shrinking city to break with the growth machine.” However, the following argument raises questions about the academic commentaries of urban shrinkage. Rather than seeing the Youngstown 2010 Plan as about “shrinkage,” it instead operates through a combination of “growth” and “shrinkage” as certain spaces and interests are prioritized.

Given the importance of Youngstown’s approach to “shrinking smart,” the remainder of this article will trace the history and analyze the effects and problems of Youngstown’s approach. Drawing on archival research, primary sources, and regular attendance at neighborhood and community meetings (noted above), the article: (a) reviews how the Youngstown 2010 Plan emerged; (b) considers how the plan has been implemented and the outcomes that have emerged in the subsequent years; and (c) examines the significance of the challenges and contradictions revealed by Youngstown as a case study of “smart shrinkage.” We also evaluate the tensions inherent in urban redevelopment between balancing the desire for economic development and growth with that of neighborhood redevelopment and stabilization.

PLANNING FOR SHRINKAGE The Youngstown 2010 Plan, introduced in 2005, attempted to address the combined effects of deindustrialization, suburbanization, and a declining quality of life within the city. The symptoms of decline had been gathering momentum for decades. Nestled in the Mahoning Valley, midway between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, in the northeastern corner of Ohio, Youngstown had prospered in the 1950s as one of the three largest steelproducing cities in the United States. The industry had supported a city characterized by strong median wages, high rates of home ownership, and high rates of employment.

Between 1950 and 2010, the population fell from 168 thousand to fewer than 67 thousand —a decline of over 60 percent. In the 1950s and 1960s, those with the financial means and the inclination moved out to the city’s ever-expanding suburbs. By the early 1970s, concerns were voiced regarding the increase in vacant properties throughout the city. The problem was exacerbated when, in the midst of economic recession and generalized economic restructuring, the steel industry in the city dramatically collapsed, beginning with the closure of the Campbell Sheet and Tube Works in September 1977. Between 1977 and 1985, approximately 29,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in the Youngstown area (Ott, 1987). This hit working-class neighborhoods particularly hard, and estimates suggest that between 1977 and 1982 alone, “the working class of Youngstown lost $1.3 billion in manufacturing wages annually [and] unemployment reached 24.9 percent in 1983,” while unemployment exceeded 10 percent throughout the 1980s (Linkon and Russo, 2002, p. 47).

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Youngstown’s experience reflected national trends, as an estimated 22.3 million Americans lost jobs with the closure of manufacturing plants between 1969 and 1976 (Bluestone and Harrison, 1982, p. 4). Youngstown experienced a second wave of layoffs in the early 2000s, as employers such as WCI Steel, General Motors, and Delphi shed another 24,000 jobs across the Mahoning Valley between 2000 and 2008 (Schmitt, 2008d). Restructuring also undermined wages of the jobs that remained. In 2006, median wages in Youngstown were just $22,000, half of the median level for the state of Ohio (Kildee et al., 2009, p. 8), further contributing to the outward migration of the “Youngstown diaspora.” The proportion of city families with incomes below the poverty line increased from 20.4% in 1999 to 27% in 2006 (ibid., p. 10).

The loss of population, jobs, and family income have been devastating to Youngstown, contributing to a housing surplus, depressed house values, high rates of vacancy, declining rates of home ownership, and increased private rentals. The 2000 US census showed that the city had an excess of 3,325 housing units and a median housing value approximately half of the median for Mahoning County (City of Youngstown, 2005, p. 31) and significantly lower than national figures. In 2006, the median house price in Youngstown was around $80,000 compared to a national median of $185,000 (Birchall, 2007). A 2004 study found that issues relating to housing and the quality of life in neighborhoods were key concerns for city residents, with 28.6 percent of respondents claiming a “poor” quality of life in their neighborhoods, while 62.2% stated it was “average” (George, 2004, p.3); 38.1% of respondents identified the biggest problems in their neighborhoods as housing, particularly vacancy, poor maintenance, and noise (ibid., p.10; also cited in Schmitt, 2008b). Declining neighborhoods and poverty probably contributed to Youngstown’s high levels of crime, including violent crime. Throughout the 1990s, the city regularly registered a per capita murder rate that was eight times the national average, exceeding that of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago (Linkon and Russo, 2002, p. 193). In 2007, the number of murders (39) was the highest registered in nine years, despite the city spending $1.5 million on a violent crime reduction strategy (Schmitt, 2008a).

The Youngstown 2010 Plan represented an attempt to provide a vision and strategies for addressing the city’s problems in a deliberate, thoughtful way, something that had been missing in a city seen to lack coordination, as well as the human and organizational capital to stimulate economic development (Safford, 2009). The plan was intended to provide clear direction by replacing outdated strategic plans, last reviewed in the 1970s, which were “based on growth and expansion” (City of Youngstown, 2005, p. 14). It represented the first comprehensive citywide plan since 1951 and last updated in 1974. The 2010 Plan was the basis for a redevelopment strategy that aimed to replace a plan that “was without foundation and virtually obsolete” with a new vision that would “provide a solid foundation for a cleaner, greener, and more efficient city” (ibid., p. 7) and enable the city “to pick up the pieces and organize them to set the stage for sustainable regeneration of the 21st century” (ibid., p. 15). The plan was developed through collaboration between the City of Youngstown and Youngstown State University (YSU). It was initiated through a process of civic engagement, consisting of workshops developed in consultation with the Torontobased Urban Strategies Inc. Meetings engaged community leaders, local governments, non-profit organizations, business and religious groups, trade unions, educational institutions, and the media (ibid., p. 17). The result was a new planning “vision” that was

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presented in a public meeting on December 16, 2002, attended by 1,400 people (ibid.).

The plan was constructed around four principal aims: 1. Accepting that Youngstown is a smaller city: Youngstown should strive to be a model of a sustainable midsize city.

2. Defining Youngstown’s role in the new regional economy: Youngstown must align itself with the realities of the new regional economy.

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3. Improving Youngstown’s image and enhancing quality of life: Making Youngstown a healthier and better place to live and work.

4. A call to action: An achievable and practical action-oriented plan to make things happen. (ibid., p. 135) The Plan was widely seen as ushering in a new era for the city, as well as new leadership. A key figure in the development of the plan was Jay Williams, previously head of the city’s community development agency, who in part because of his leadership on this project was elected city mayor in 2005, just months after the plan was introduced. The Plan clearly recognized that Youngstown would continue to shrink, and the city’s willingness to break with urban redevelopment traditions in the U.S. is what drew so much media and academic attention to the area over the past decade. Most of this attention, and most research on the concept of shrinking cities, has focused on the process of developing the Youngstown 2010 Plan and the ideas it presented, not on its implementation (Schatz, 2008; Hollander, 2009; Shetty, 2009; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012). A critical analysis of how the city has approached implementing the 2010 Plan, particularly the challenges of fostering economic growth, addressing vacant properties, and stabilizing neighborhoods, reveal the limits of the shrinking cities model.

“SHRINKING” DOWN IN YOUNGSTOWN Economic Development While Weichmann and Pallagst (2012) suggest that the Youngstown 2010 Plan represents a break from the dominant growth paradigm, the strategy itself does not represent a complete breach with the principle of growth. The city proposed to combine economic growth with neighborhood revitalization and stabilization of the city’s population (at around 80,000 residents) through “a strategic program to rationalize and consolidate the urban infrastructure in a socially responsible and financially sustainable manner” (City of Youngstown, 2005, p. 18). As outlined above, a central problem confronting shrinking cities has been a lack of employment opportunities and capital investment. The inability to retain or regain jobs has been a key factor in the decline of cities such as Pittsburgh, Detroit, Dresden, Leipzig, as well as Youngstown. This reflects broader processes of globalization and economic restructuring, as cities—not just those experiencing population decline—are forced to compete for a position within regional and global marketplaces. As a result, economic development strategies have been integral to the approaches adopted by many cities experiencing shrinkage or “no-growth” (Bontje, 2004; Shetty, 2009; Power et al., 2010; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012). Youngstown’s economic

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development program has focused on downtown redevelopment and revitalization, promoting the city as a center for high-tech industries, and enhancing the area’s traditional reputation for manufacturing.

Downtown development has generally been a central feature of the strategic plans adopted by “shrinking cities,” as reinvestment in the urban core through the construction of apartment buildings, convocation centers, and bars and restaurants has been seen as a way to stimulate economic growth, evident in cities such Sheffield, Manchester, Leipzig, Dresden, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh (Bontje, 2004; Power et al., 2010; Ploger, 2012; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012). The 2010 Plan identified downtown as the city’s largest “priority business node” (ibid, p. 52). Between 1998 and 2008, over $100 million of investment was channeled into downtown projects such as the construction of the Covelli Center, the Federal Courthouse Building, the DeYor Performing Arts Centre, and the Youngstown Business Incubator (YBI) (Schmitt, 2008a). Much of the funding came from federal sources. For example, the Covelli Center arena was built in 2005 with a $26.8 million federal grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) (O’Brien, 2008). The revitalization was also aided by the expansion of Youngstown State University and the development of several downtown residential projects in repurposed buildings, which have all opened in the last five years. These efforts involved both private and public funding, such as the conversion of the Realty Towers building into 23 luxury condominiums aimed at “young professionals” and owned by a private developer. The project cost a total of $8 million, half of which was covered by federal and state tax credits (Pakulski, 2008). A Vindicator newspaper editorial in 2007 proudly claimed that “an urban renaissance has been quietly but successfully taking root in the Valley— particularly where it counts most, in downtown Youngstown. Recent and on-going success stories … are redefining and re-energizing the core area of the core city of the Mahoning Valley” (Vindicator, 2007).

Efforts have also focused on developing new types of businesses downtown. For example, the YBI was established in 1995 and supports an array of business-to-business software development companies. It operates with a $400,000 annual budget, including $225,000 in funds awarded by the Ohio Department of Development through its Thomas Edison Incubator Initiative (Gomez, 2006). The YBI brought in more than $60 million in global software sales in 2010 (Macgaw, 2011), and it has attracted significant regional and national interest from the media. Additionally, VXI Global Solutions opened a customer service center in downtown Youngstown in 2009 and employed 1,100 by May 2011.

Alongside this economic diversification, development activities have also built on the city’s historical strength in manufacturing, including a successful effort during the U.S. auto crisis to keep open the General Motors Lordstown plant that is located just outside of the city, and attracting new plants. Most notably, in June 2010, V&M Star opened its $650 million pipe mill facility, employing 350 workers, in Girard, adjacent to Youngstown.

This deal was brokered in part through the provision of $20 million dollars of federal stimulus money, while the City of Youngstown itself contributed $5 million in incentives (Youngstown and Warren Regional Chamber, 2010, p.31).

These developments have been achieved through an effective process of place marketing, public subsidies for private investment, tax incentives, state and federal stimulus funds, the relatively cheap costs of land and labor, low state corporation taxes, and the city covering costs of the redevelopment of land, especially brownfield sites (Youngstown and

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Warren Regional Chamber, 2010). As Mayor Williams told Fox News in July 2010, federal dollars and tax breaks have been used to, “create the environment to attract that private investment.” Williams added that, “The cost of doing business here is comparative to anywhere else in the country—in fact, better than most places in the country … we’re providing incentives that help mitigate the risk to the entrepreneurs …” (Fox News Business, 2010). Williams claimed increased incentives for economic development secured $9.5 million in new investment and 120 jobs in 2007 (Schmitt, 2008d). In May 2011, Forbes ranked the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman Metropolitan area as the fifth fastest growing industrial area in America (Kotkin, 2011). Between 2009 and 2011, the Regional Chamber claimed “a total of $1.06 billion in economic activity over the last three years resulting in nearly 3,000 jobs” (Business Journal Daily, 2012). Thus, even as Youngstown touted its commitment to smart shrinkage, it continued to promote a narrative of economic growth.

Unfortunately, that story inflated the number of jobs actually created and ignored the broader context of growing unemployment. Between the beginning of the current recession in December 2007 and December 2010, the Youngstown-Warren area officially lost around 17,000 jobs (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011). In 2010, the average unemployment rate in the City of Youngstown itself was almost 13% (Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, 2010), and the Valley’s unemployment rate has been among the highest in Ohio. A large proportion of the local population has experienced a spell of unemployment, seen their wages and benefits cut, or been forced to work part-time or retire early.

Further, relatively few of the new jobs involve highly skilled, technical/professional/ managerial positions which are well-rewarded. Most are low-skilled, low-paid, insecure service-sector jobs, so that economic “growth” reinforces socio-economic polarization and inequalities, particularly in a city marked by the low education and skill levels that characterize the working-age population. Consequently, the discrepancies between stated jobs created under 2010 Plan and actual labor statistics suggest a gross overstatement of new jobs and largely reflect the creation of low-skilled service work and a recounting of laid off employees during the recession, especially in auto-related industries in the Youngstown area.

Physical Redevelopment The strategy of public support for private development, often speculative, not only means that city government bears much of the risk of development projects, but it also diverts funds away from municipal activities focused on public infrastructure, housing, and fighting crime. Thus, economic development efforts have limited the direct positive impact on most city residents (Levine, 1987; Harvey, 1989). While the city has demonstrated an ability to attract some new jobs and private investment into the city, the “smart” element of Youngstown’s “smart shrinkage,” and the aspect of the strategy receiving the most media attention, has been the city’s plans to “rightsize” its urban infrastructure. In the wake of population decline, the city was left with a severely depressed housing market, plagued by blight, vacancy, and abandonment. A 2006 American Community Survey estimated that Youngstown had 8,405 vacant units, amounting to 22.8 per cent of the city’s total housing stock (Kildee et al., 2009, p. 11). Despite the scale of these problems, Youngstown’s efforts to reduce blight and strengthen neighborhoods have had a

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positive impact on some parts of the city. The recognition that Youngstown was going to be home to fewer people than it had historically, for example, curbed new housing developments and led to policies that helped individuals and groups acquire vacant land without paying back taxes, contributing to projects that transformed empty lots into parks and urban gardens (Lanks, 2006). By February 2008, 800 city lots had been transferred from the land bank to homeowners (Schmitt, 2008c). Perhaps most importantly, the city has been able to increase funding for the demolition of vacant structures from $320,000 in 2005 to $1.5 million in 2007 (Aepel, 2007). In the two years prior to February 2008, 1,000 buildings were demolished (Schmitt, 2008a), but in the next two years, 2,000 vacant structures were torn down (Skolnick, 2010a). These strategies reflect the Plan’s goal to “create a liveable city by eliminating blight, increasing property maintenance, and beautifying public spaces and gateways,” and “improve the attractiveness of Youngstown as a place to live and do business” (City of Youngstown, 2005, p. 19).

However, attempts at neighborhood stabilization also exhibit highly exclusionary and uneven tendencies, largely due to the principles that guide the redevelopment efforts. The 2010 Plan distinguished between what it termed “stable,” “transitional,” and “weak” neighborhoods (City of Youngstown, 2005). Sections of four neighborhoods (Oak Hill, Warren, East Side, and Brier Hill) were deemed to be “beyond any hope of short-term solutions and require comprehensive reinvestment strategies” (City of Youngstown, 2005, pp. 34–35) that exceeded the fiscal capabilities of the city.2 As a result, resources have been channeled into transitional neighborhoods, defined as those “exhibiting a substantial population base but which still display tax and structure problems” that “have not reached the point of no return and could benefit by city program intervention.” These neighborhoods are characterized by lower rates of vacancy and blight, higher rates of home ownership, higher-quality housing stock, and often stronger existing neighborhood organizations. Stabilizing such neighborhoods, the Plan suggests, “gives the city a starting point from which to reclaim some of the adjacent neighborhoods that have not so successfully withstood the test of time” (City of Youngstown, 2005, p. 45).

The relatively more affluent, stable, or what the 2010 Plan termed “viable” neighborhoods have been prioritized. These include areas with historic homes, higher property values and rates of home ownership, and lower rates of abandonment and vacancy. Given the limited resources at its disposal, the city targeted those areas with the greatest a chance of “survival,” while other areas of the city endured benign neglect. This replicates the strategies employed across a range of “weak market” American cities such as Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, and Baltimore.

The 2010 Plan’s weak commitment to the deteriorating physical environment provided a space for non-governmental organizations to attempt to implement elements of the 2010 Plan. The Youngstown Neighborhood Development Association (YNDC)—an organization funded by public, private, and charitable contributions (notably the Wean Foundation), and the sole community development corporation in the city and the vehicle through which much of the community redevelopment in Youngstown has been carried out—has focused its efforts on the Idora Park neighborhood, a mixed-income, predominantly African-American area in the southwest of the city. Resources have been targeted

2

It is important to note that these areas were largely poor African-American neighborhoods.

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toward removing vacant structures, engaging residents, establishing urban gardens and farms, transferring land to residents and the community, rehabilitating homes, training young workers in property deconstruction and reclamation, and providing assistance to low-income families to purchase homes in the area.

Certainly, the YNDC and local residents have made a substantial difference within the Idora Park neighborhood, improving the everyday experience for residents, with more green space, reduced urban blight, access to gardens and fresh produce, training programs in urban agriculture, and lower rates of crime. While the YNDC has been highly effective in mobilizing grassroots support within the Idora district through its relationship with the Idora Park Neighborhood Association, residents only benefit directly from such activities to the extent that the areas they reside in align with private interests and possess the potential for significantly increased market value, which itself is used as a proxy for “stabilization.” In this sense, it is only these residents—or those in similarly defined “transitional” neighborhoods such as Crandall Park North and Lincoln Knolls—that have been the beneficiaries of “smart shrinkage.” Unfortunately, many of the neighborhoods with poorer, more heavily African-American populations do not possess these assets and as a result remain largely outside the scope of the 2010 Plan. Indeed, few of the benefits that were predicted to accrue to adjacent areas have occurred. Instead, neighborhoods like Idora Park represent islands of relative stability in a larger landscape of disinvestment, blight, and instability.

For the city neighborhoods identified as “weak,” the process of Youngstown’s “shrinkage” has appeared chaotic rather than “controlled” or “smart.” The Plan implied that the city would be able to stop providing services to large swathes of weaker neighborhoods, operating on the assumption that long-term residents would willingly move. In practice, many residents were, understandably, not willing to leave homes in sparsely populated neighborhoods, nor did the Plan provide adequate incentives for relocation. The city’s population remains unevenly distributed, and while residents continue to move out of some struggling areas, the city has not been able to cut services.

While the city has demolished thousands of vacant properties, its program lacks transparency and appears to have been executed randomly rather than based on community priorities as outlined in the Plan (MVOC, 2011, p. 53). While other shrinking cities have relied on computerized monitoring systems to track demolition, Youngstown lacks a single computerized system to concentrate demolition efforts in specific areas and enable the reduction of infrastructure, even after the National Vacant Properties Campaign Report specifically recommended it (Kildee et al., 2009, p.18) Such monitoring systems have been central to the attempts to deal with shrinkage in cities such as Bilbao and Dresden (Plöger, 2012). In Schwedt in Germany, federal resources have been predicated on the existence of a clear demolition program (Wiechmann and Pallgast, 2012). This has not been the case in Youngstown.

Once again, community non-governmental agencies have stepped in. The Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative (MVOC), a local nonprofit organization funded largely by the Wean Foundation, which has campaigned around vacant properties, concluded that, “The scattershot method is not working. It is time to embrace a strategic approach that can solidify the future of our neighborhoods” (2011, p. 56). Youngstown City Councilman Paul Drennen bemoaned the lack of a clear demolition strategy, criticizing “shotgun demolition with one house here and one house there. When you demolish one or two

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houses on a street that needs ten demolished, it doesn’t work” (Skolnick, 2011c). Indeed, an editorial in the Vindicator newspaper in March 2012 (Vindicator, 2012) revealed that the city remained without a strategic approach to demolition almost seven years into the implementation of the 2010 Plan. The editorial suggested that while high vacancy rates were a feature of a number of Ohio cities, “what may set Youngstown apart from other communities is the absence of a comprehensive demolition list that would allow politicians and bureaucrats to establish priorities. Without such a list, demolition has been conducted on an arbitrary basis” (ibid.) The article included a quote from DeMaine Kitchen, administrator of the mayor’s office and a former councilman, who stated that the process was “complaintdriven and determined by whomever you were talking to: demolition department, administration, neighbors and council … There never was any order” (ibid.). The city also lacks a clear or effective approach to code enforcement. In 2008, demolition supervisor Mike Damiano “said enforcing the city’s housing codes will remain a secondary concern until the abandoned-building situation is under control. He hopes this will be the case by 2010” (Schmitt, 2008b). This neglect of code enforcement has continued beyond 2010, despite the fact that the National Vacant Properties Campaign 2009 report cited the need for aggressive code enforcement as a means of tackling vacancy rates, blight, and abandonment in Youngstown and Mahoning County (Kildee et al., 2009, p. 16). Between 2008 and 2010, the MVOC citizen survey of neighborhoods revealed a 25 percent increase in the number of structures given the lowest rating “for posing immediate health and safety issues” (MVOC, 2011, p. 4). In May 2011, city residents, the MVOC, and councilors criticized the mayor and the administration for not pursuing code enforcement (WKBN, 2011). This ineffectual response to code enforcement has not been helped by the city’s failure to hold landlords accountable for the maintenance of property and the conduct of tenants. Although Mayor Williams promised to create a landlord registration scheme as part of his campaign for re-election, it was not implemented until May 2010, and even then registration was voluntary. Furthermore, owners of vacant properties were excluded from this scheme, and it was not until October 2011, following concerted pressure from residents and community groups (including the MVOC), that the city passed a Vacant Property Registration Ordinance. Yet, this slow and ineffectual response to issues of vacancy, abandonment, and enforcement of housing codes has further exacerbated neighborhood decline.

Controlled Shrinkage and the Housing Crisis The “controlled shrinkage” that was touted as the principal aim of the 2010 Plan has played out in a chaotic manner, reflecting the limited scope and vision of the Plan, as well as related problems of implementation. However, it also reflects the limited resources at the city’s disposal, particularly from state and federal funding streams that remain targeted toward growth and construction rather than shrinkage. Indeed, this is evident in relation to the state and federal funds Youngstown has been able to access for economic redevelopment projects—such as downtown residential developments and the local convocation center; these are funds that are much less readily available for projects relating to demolition and neighborhood stabilization. In Youngstown, much of the financial support for neighborhood redevelopment has come from private, often philanthropic, resources and organizations such as the Wean Foundation. This has been paralleled in Detroit where

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significant funding for demolition and neighborhood redevelopment has come from the Kresge Foundation. In part because resources are limited, they have been concentrated in those areas identified as “viable.” This is particularly evident in the context of the contemporary recession and housing crisis. The subprime mortgage crisis, which hit Ohio and Youngstown particularly hard, has led to increased rates of foreclosure. On November 30, 2010, nearly 1,500 structures in the city were in foreclosure, a rate of 1 in 40, almost three times the national average during the third quarter of 2010 (MVOC, 2011, p. 4). Similarly, at the start of 2011, 15,309 tax liens were active on Youngstown properties (ibid.). Despite these high rates of foreclosure, in September 2008, Youngstown received just $2.7 million from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), which was approximately one-third of the money received by Akron, whose foreclosure rate was less than that of Youngstown (Skolnick, 2008). While the city was awarded over $1 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the third round of NSP funding, only 10 percent of that can be spent on housing demolition, a policy that is ill-suited to the demands of cities experiencing significant population loss (Skolnick, 2010b). Similarly, a nine-community proposal seeking $32.4 million in NSP stabilization funding, including $11 million for Youngstown, was rejected in January 2010. In large part this reflected fears over Youngstown’s capacity to deliver the proposed work (Skolnick, 2010a). Again, the mortgage settlement funds announced by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine in February 2012 required cities seeking support to provide half the money required in match funding, which limits the amount of funds available to poorer and smaller cities like Youngstown (Skolnick, 2012). These examples highlight a tendency by state and federal government to favor larger cities with greater resources and organizational capacity, even as they reflect the general scarcity of resources for housing demolition rather than construction.

Overall, the combination of administrative inefficiency, the lack of a strategic approach to demolition and code enforcement, limited public resources, and the ongoing housing market crisis have limited progress in the physical redevelopment of Youngstown. A vacant property survey conducted by the MVOC in 2010 revealed that the city’s demolition rates had barely managed to keep up with new vacancies. The survey found that 3,236 structures remained vacant, a vacancy rate of 44.8 structures per 1,000 people, nearly 20 times the national average. This represented an additional 1,117 vacant structures since the previous survey in 2008, highlighting the inadequacy of the current program of demolition (MVOC, 2011, p. 4). The 2005 Plan itself recognized the consequences of a failure to deal with this: “The impact on neighborhoods where abandoned houses exist is catastrophic, leading to further disinvestment and abandonment” (City of Youngstown, 2005, p. 31). In arguing for the importance of a proactive approach, the Plan proved prophetic: the population and condition of the city continue to decline.

Social Milieu One of the most difficult challenges of urban redevelopment is balancing the need for economic investment with the multifaceted social concerns and inequalities of the broader community. This need is particularly acute in shrinking cities, which face especially stark social problems, divisions, and inequalities (Power et al., 2010; Mallach, 2012; Plöger, 2012; Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012). This has been especially significant in declining

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U.S. industrial cities, where the sheer scale of manufacturing and population losses through deindustrialization and suburbanization, coupled with weak federal intervention and welfare programs, has led to social and economic problems more severe than those experienced by similar “weak market” cities in Europe (Power et al., 2010, p.306).

Youngstown, like Flint and Detroit, for instance, suffers from a range of social ills— high crime, a poor education system, a lack of services and amenities, and high rates of poverty and unemployment—which contribute to ongoing population loss and are especially difficult for local administrations to address.

The Youngstown 2010 Plan recognized the need to improve the quality of life of city residents and to address racial divisions, public safety concerns, and the education system (City of Youngstown, 2005, p. 18). However, the imbalance between the attention given to economic development and the efforts put into these social concerns is significant and problematic. In Youngstown, as in other “shrinking” cities, efforts to create employment opportunities and build the local economy are not adequate to ameliorate the social problems associated with economic and population decline.

No doubt, the erosion of the city’s employment base plays a central role in shrinkage, as in other deindustrialized cities. Thus, the focus on attracting inward investment and revitalizing downtown areas makes some sense. But the imbalance between economic development and addressing social problems reflects a widely reported pattern in urban governance in recent decades. U.S. cities in particular, facing budgetary crises and a lack of significant federal investment, increasingly seek private investment as a means of addressing financial and social woes, compelling cities into an approach that favors “entrepreneurial” activities over more “managerial” or socially oriented functions (Harvey, 1989; Savitch and Kantor, 2002; Power et al., 2010). While Savitch and Kantor (2002) recognize this general shift, they argue that city administrations retain a degree of agency, and they do not see the pursuit of economic aims at the expense of socially oriented actions as inevitable. Recognizing the diverse approaches of cities, across differing national and regional contexts, they note that cities’ “development choice[s]” rest on their “bargaining ability,” and cities pursue different policies based on the available “political, economic and social assets” (ibid., 2002, p. 27). Poorer cities, particularly those like Youngstown with declining population and tax bases, are in the weakest bargaining position. Lacking federal assistance and significant tax revenues, such U.S. cities are often pushed to pursue a development strategy centered upon economic rather than social concerns. Indeed, when Savitch and Kantor compared the urban redevelopment strategies pursued by both European and American cities, they found that the three American cities they studied—Detroit, New York, and Houston—all pursued more market-oriented policies than European cities. For them, the lack of federal support in the U.S. means cities are compelled towards such policies due to an “apprehension over revenue raising compounded by fear that other localities would raid local capital.” (ibid, p. 154). In contrast, in “European cities largesse from higher governments permits local politicians to distribute benefits to local constituencies without seeking donations from the private sector”. This orientation toward market-based strategies was strongest in cities most dependent upon private investment. They note, for instance, how Detroit was the city most heavily oriented toward market-based strategies for redevelopment and least oriented toward social programs (ibid, p. 157). This is evident in

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Youngstown—a similarly poorly resourced city—where the courting of private investment has seemingly assumed priority over and above more socially oriented policies.

Neither economic development nor addressing urban blight is sufficient to solve the social problems associated with deindustrialization. Indeed, as Schatz (2008) rightly argues, the Youngstown 2010 Plan, in its inception, prioritized the pursuit of economic development and strategies for dealing with vacant properties, but it offered no plans to deal with inequalities or high rates of poverty. Youngstown’s economic development efforts have not provided training opportunities that would link city residents to emergent employment opportunities, and efforts such as those based at the YBI do not directly result in new jobs for city residents.

While blight and abandonment are associated with a range of negative influences on quality of life, the removal of physical signs of deterioration cannot, in itself, correct the central problems underlying Youngstown’s population loss. As an MVOC (2011, p. 5) report noted, “demolition activity alone is not capable of addressing the vacancy and blight challenges faced by the City of Youngstown. If Youngstown is to overcome the ongoing chronic disinvestment and abandonment it has faced for the past several decades, its approach must include a comprehensive strategy that is targeted and community-driven.”

Bontje (2004, p. 19) observes similar tendencies in Leipzig’s strategic approach to “shrinkage,” which emphasized physical regeneration rather than employment and career opportunities: “The measures announced are merely creating a more attractive public space and a more attractive housing stock. Without a link to job-generating strategies, these measures will eventually not be enough to keep the working-population in the city, let alone that they would attract new inhabitants.”

This is not to say that socially oriented policies have not been pursued by the city administration; however, the 2010 Plan’s strategic focus on neighborhoods deemed potentially viable excludes low-income residents outside of these zones of development, concentrated in neighborhoods experiencing greater levels of blight and disinvestment. In the Idora Park neighborhood, residents have experienced improvements in quality of life as vacant properties and blight have been tackled, assisted-purchase housing has been introduced for low-income families, and residents are being trained in urban agriculture to address problems of food desertification. However, for those residents not fortunate enough to reside in or to be able to move into such neighborhoods, they remain marginalized, beyond the scope and vision of the 2010 Plan. This reflects a broader development in the U.S. Whereas in Europe, “weak market” cities have seen substantial state and European Union investment into the most deprived neighborhoods, in the U.S., from the 1990s in cities such as Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Detroit, and Cleveland, the “watering can” approach that sought to invest in the poorest neighborhoods has been replaced by a strategy that focuses instead on areas deemed to possess “potential” (Power et al., 2010; Plöger, 2012).

As Plöger (2012, p. 338) states, in the U.S., “resource allocation is shifting toward more focused investment in neighborhoods that are showing signs of distress yet are also considered to be ‘savable’ if supported.” The “savability” of such neighborhoods is predicated both upon the scale of their problems and on the potential exchange value of residential and commercial properties in them, meaning that the poorest neighborhoods and their residents are deemed “unviable,” serving to reproduce and accentuate existing

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racial and class inequalities (Plöger, 2012). Neither economic development efforts nor demolishing vacant properties is sufficient to address the community’s social needs.

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THE LIMITS OF ‘SMART’ SHRINKAGE Under the auspices of the 2010 Plan, Youngstown has made some made inroads into problems of blight, abandonment, and vacancy and has demonstrated an ability with federal government assistance to attract economic investment through the creation of a “businessfriendly” climate and the revitalization of the downtown core. Similarly, through the work of the YNDC and MVOC, it has been possible to stabilize a limited number of neighborhoods, arresting the population decline in these areas and improving the quality of life for some residents.

However, the city administration has done little to improve the lives of many city residents, particularly poorer residents, who continue to face daily experiences of poverty; crime; lack of employment, services, and amenities; and blight. Indeed, a study conducted by the Brookings Institution in 2011 found that between 2000 and 2005–2009, the proportion of poor residents living in extreme-poverty tracts had risen to 49.7 percent (an increase of 36.3 percent), the highest rate in the U.S., as the number of high-poverty tracts also increased from 5 to 12 (Kneebone et al., 2011, p. 27). In the context of ongoing high rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, lack of access to fresh produce, and a failing local school district, the 2010 Plan has been unable to alleviate social and economic inequalities that remain a pervasive feature of the landscape of Youngstown.

The net result is continued shrinkage. Between 2000 and 2010, the city lost another 18.4 percent of its population, dropping to 66,982, compounding already existing problems, most obviously in relation to neighborhoods, housing, and vacancy. Faced with the failure of the city’s “controlled” shrinkage, then–Mayor Jay Williams responded with surprise: “I’m trying to find a rational reason why there would be such a decline. At this point, I’m unable to connect the dots to support or explain such a steep decline. It would almost cause me to question the actual count” (cited in Skolnick, 2011a). Certainly, one explanation could be the city’s failure to effectively address vacancy and blight, or to attend to the related social problems experienced by many city residents, including limited employment opportunities. Indeed, the example of Youngstown reveals the inadequacies of an approach that focuses on economic development and fails to effectively engage with urban blight or address ongoing social problems; while illustrating the extent of the challenges facing “shrinking cities,” Youngstown’s story also demonstrates the problems with the very notion of “smart shrinkage” itself.

The concept of smart shrinkage is an implicit abandonment of half of the socio-spatial dialectic. As Martin (2011, p. 486) reminds us, people’s daily experiences are embedded and embodied in place, even though “we also experience the processes of urbanization that are spatial,” (our emphasis) such as the multi-scalar processes that have undermined cities and regions like Youngstown. Situated, social place is not equivalent to structural, economic space. What this means is that any effective policy in a deindustrializing or distressed city that involves the triage mentality of the “shrinkage cities” discourse will worsen and deepen the cycle of decline. Place-based social relations are fundamental to the local social fabric that allows some declining cities to avoid the “rupture” of sudden and inexorable decline—and to instead experience “post-industrial neoliberalism in more

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muted fashion, characterized by a condition of political economic stasis, where old industries and political interests persist alongside new economic strategies and developments.” (Williams and Pendras, 2013 p. 289). Regional and municipal actors must do what they can—within the severe contraints in which they operate—to protect “concrete and specifically geographically situated practices and relations” that define the essence of place and “place-making, in all its complex and multi-faceted dimensions” (Martin, 2011, pp. 486–487).

“Smart shrinkage”—that is, the combination of acknowledging that the city is shrinking and attempting to manage the process—is what made the Youngstown 2010 Plan significant. While this critical appraisal highlights the lack of clearly defined strategy or approach to neighborhood stabilization, it also points to more profound problems with the notion of “smart shrinkage,” especially a problem of scale. While much of the “shrinking cities” literature recognizes the impact of global patterns of economic restructuring and its national, regional, and local consequences, this body of work tends to focus on both the city and the region as the level at which a concerted response to “shrinkage” can be formulated. However, the Youngstown example reveals the challenges and obstacles faced by a city attempting to manage population decline. For instance, the contemporary global recession, the housing and foreclosure crisis, the orientation of state and federal policies toward growth rather than shrinkage, have all contributed to the ongoing population losses experienced by Youngstown, and failure to arrest the social and economic processes that both result from and contribute to population loss. What is visible in Youngstown is a city struggling to create enough jobs to address the outflow of employment, or to address problems of blight, abandonment, and vacancy, at the very moment in which the foreclosure crisis and the recession are contributing to further neighborhood deterioration.

It is clear that without significant state and federal investment, Youngstown and cities like it will struggle not only to manage ongoing population losses, but also to address the stark social and economic vulnerability that underlies processes of urban shrinkage. The lack of federal support forces cities to rely more heavily on private investment which they aggressively pursue, often at the expense of socially oriented policies. As Savitch and Kantor (2002) have noted, this particularly affects poorer cities, least able to pursue social redevelopment policies as a result of their economic weaknesses. In Youngstown, this imbalance between the pursuit of economic investment and the neglect of socially oriented interventions is clearly evident, and the concentration of poverty as well as enduring population losses reveal the inadequacies of such emphases. Similarly, even though the YNDC has been able to significantly improve the quality of life for city residents in Idora Park, its limited resources and emphasis on largely the “physical” aspects of regeneration demonstrates how the activities of community development corporations (CDCs), “are not panaceas for social problems and cannot replace the policies and resources that need to come from government” (Jonas and McCarthy, 2009, p. 308).

What Power et al.’s (2010) research on the recovery of “weak market” cities in Europe also reveals is how without a coordinated approach to address the economic, physical, and social symptoms and manifestations of “urban decline,” and in the absence of significant state or federal intervention, the ability of smaller and poorer cities, in particular, to “recover” are extremely limited. A Brookings Institution report (Vey, 2007) observed how state and federal support was essential to the recovery of the older industrial cities of the

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United States. However, in light of the current drift toward market-centered urban redevelopment strategies, the prospects for American cities like Youngstown to enact “smart shrinkage” appear unlikely. Especially, as “over the last decade even the limited federal programs that supported city recovery have shrunk. The much lower spending on welfare, public health and social support shows up in high levels of inequality, absolute poverty, child developmental problems, poor health, poor schooling, and so on” (Power et al., 2010, p. 343).

The case of Youngstown demonstrates how enduring the processes underlying shrinkage are, and how localized responses, however innovative and coordinated, remain subject to the vagaries of larger economic and governmental decisions. This limits the ability of cities like Youngstown to control or remedy the economic, physical, and social problems that characterize such urban landscapes. While the urban redevelopment undertaken in Youngstown reveals what “shrinking cities” can do, through a focus on addressing blight and acknowledging that the city will not return to its previous size, it also demonstrates the problems that result both from a lack of a strategic, balanced focus, and from a shortage of resources that compel cities to pursue more heavily market oriented policies that fail to address and even compound existing inequalities and social problems.

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Wiechmann, T. and Pallagst, K.M., 2012, Urban shrinkage in Germany and the USA: A comparison of transformation patterns and local strategies. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 36, 261–280.

Williams, C. and Pendras, M., 2013, Urban stasis and the politics of alternative development in the United States. Urban Geography, Vol. 34, 289–304.

WKBN, 2011, East Side Youngstown residents look to reduce blight and crime. WKBN television website, May 12. Retrieved May 15, 2011 from http://www.wkbn.com/ content/news/local/story/East-Side-Youngstown-Residents-Look-to-Reduce/ PG3_7BBO60K32eDV1fUq1Q.cspx Youngstown and Warren Regional Chamber, 2010, Youngstown and Warren, Ohio: An Exploration of the Dynamic Business and Lifestyle Climate. Portland, MI: Great Lakes Publishing.