Youngstown 2010: The City That Chose to Shrink
Near Youngstown, Ohio
By the early two-thousands, Youngstown had lost sixty percent of its peak population. Where one hundred sixty-eight thousand people had lived in nineteen fifty, fewer than eighty thousand remained, and the number was still falling. The city's housing stock had been built for a much larger population. Entire blocks stood empty. Fires set by arsonists burned vacant houses at a rate of nearly two hundred per year. Tall grass grew through the floors of abandoned structures. The infrastructure, the water mains, the sewer lines, the street lights, had been designed for a city that no longer existed.
In two thousand five, Youngstown did something that no American city had formally done before. It adopted an official plan called Youngstown Two Thousand Ten, and the core of that plan was an honest acknowledgment: the city was not going to grow back. Rather than pretending otherwise, the plan embraced what planners called smart shrinkage. Decommission excess infrastructure. Demolish blighted structures. Convert abandoned land to green space, community gardens, and parks. Stop trying to attract large-scale industry. Build a city scaled to the population you actually have.
The American Planning Association gave the plan its National Planning Excellence Award in two thousand seven. The New York Times Magazine called it one of the best ideas of the year. The plan was celebrated nationally as a breakthrough in urban realism.
Implementation proved harder than the idea. Money for demolitions was chronically short. The recession of two thousand eight hit just as the plan was gaining traction. Progress came slowly. But over the following fifteen years, thousands of vacant structures were torn down. The arson rate dropped from nearly two hundred fires annually to around fifteen. The number of vacant properties was cut roughly in half.
Youngstown did not recover in the way American cities usually measure recovery. It did not bounce back to its old population or its old economy. What it did was survive, honestly and without illusion, which in the Rust Belt may be its own kind of success.
