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In 40 years, Youngstown has lost more than half its population. Those people aren't coming back. But shrinking doesn't have to mean dying. By Christopher Swope

Anthony Kobak has borrowed the mayor's Ford Taurus for a spin around Youngstown, but as he steers the sedan down a pitted asphalt road, he wishes he'd borrowed a Jeep instead. Driving comes pretty dose to off-roading in this part of Youngstown's east side, where the sur- roundings are mostly fallow lots and a few scattered homes. Kobak stops at one street that is little more than a dirt path into the woods. But it is a city-maintained road all the same, with water, sewer and power lines. "We're just io minutes from downtown, but you can see it's very rural," says Kobak, who is Youngstown's chief planner. He points out the window toward a lone deteriorating house in a field. "Those are chicken coops over there. You can see the cages."

This part of Youngstown is called Sharon Line-the name, Kobak explains, came from a street car route that used to run through the area. Back in the 195os, this place was expected to develop into a bustling urban neighborhood. The steel mills were still roaring, and with 17o,ooo residents, Youngstownwas Ohio's seventh-

largest city and the 57 th most populous in the United States. Planners believed that the east side would soak up continuing growth and prosperity. What in fact hap- pened was quite the opposite. Not only did suburbanization suck the life out of city neighborhoods, as happened in much of America, but in the 197os, the steel mills dosed and population went into a free-fall. Quite suddenly, Youngstown's growth problem had turned into an abandoned- property problem. In Sharon Line, new houses simply weren't needed anymore. The area remained an odd country enclave tucked inside a fast-dedining city.

Now, Kobak and other Youngstown of- ficials have come around to a drastically dif- ferent vision for Sharon Line. No longer are they holding out for a mirade growth spurt. Rather, they're embracing the radical idea of gradually turning this place back to na- ture. Roads and infrastructure may be taken out of service. Some properties could be converted to wetlands. Kobak calls this way of thinking "going from gray to green," and it's not just at work in Sharon Line. In

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Oak Hill, just south of downtown, and in Brier Hill, to the north, once-vibrant blocks now plagued by abandoned homes and weedy lots are candidates to become park- land, open space and greenways.

In Youngstown these days, an ambi- tious planning process has come to a halt- ingly honest conclusion: The city is shrink- ing. If that point seems obvious enough- population is now down to about 82,000- it's one that leaders of other declining cities stubbornly refuse to admit to themselves. Cincinnati, Detroit and St. Louis all have fo- cused on reversing population losses in an attempt to reclaim bygone glory. By con- trast, Youngstown's "2o0o Plan" begins by acknowledging that Youngstown is a small city now, burdened by the overly ambitious infrastructure of its past. The plan likens Youngstown to "a size-4o man wearing a size-6o suit"

If Youngstown has made peace with its smaller self, however, its policy makers are still grappling with the key question: What does it mean to manage shrinkage in an in- telligent way? Volumes have been written about how to implement "smart growth!" But what about smart decline? Youngstown may

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"We're on our way to accepting some obvious thing s about what?Youngstown is and isn't going to be." -Mayor Jay Williams emerge as something of a national labora- tory for ideas on how to cope with urban con- traction. It's not that the town's civic leaders want to be in that position-they simply see little choice. "We're on our way to accepting some obvious things about what the city is and isn't going to be," says Jay Williams, Youngstown's 35-year-old mayor. "Itwas un- realistic to think we'll be a loo,ooo person city. But why not be an attractive city of 8o,ooo or 85,ooo that offers aqualityof life that competes with other cities across the state and across the country?"

Or, as Hunter Morrison puts it, "saying you're a shrinking city is not saying you're a dying city.' Morrison was Cleveland's city

planner for 20 years and now directs the urban and regional studies program at Youngstown State University. "Every city," Morrison says, "is looking back to when it used to be 200,000, 5oo,ooo, a million- whatever it was at its peak. As Marshall McLuhan put it, they're always looking to the future through the rearview mirror. And what we're saying in Youngstown is, the past is the past. It's time to turn granny's picture to the wall."

Global Shrinkage Youngstown is coming to this self-assess- ment at a time when the fortunes of urban America are very much mixed. A decade ago, population in most industrial-era cities was continuing a downward glide path that had been well established since the 195os. From New York to Seattle, the question wasn't whether big cities were losing people to the suburbs. It was how fast.

Then, in the late '9os, many cities began seeing an urban renaissance, fueled by im- migration, dropping crime rates and favor- able demographics. Population losses in New York and Chicago turned into gains. (New York, currently at 8.1 million people,

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has never been larger than it is now.) Other cities began experiencing a population par- adox. Boston and San Francisco count fewer people than they did five years ago, yet they seem to be in better economic health. What they're essentially doing is losing families with school-age children and gain- ing singles, childless couples and empty nesters-smaller households with ample incomes that demand much less in the way of city services.

But that scenario is not playing out every- where. In particular, smaller industrial cities, located mostly in the Northeast and around the Great Lakes, are finding it almost im- possible to recover from the decline of their manufacturing employment base. San Fran- cisco, Boston and Chicago can prosper in the 21st century as cultural and entertainment enters with concentrated office and retail ac- tivity and strong downtown residential growth. Elmira, Flint and Youngstown can't realistically nurture any such hopes.

The problem of shrinking industrial cities is attracting fresh interest in academic circles and new attention abroad. Since the Berlin Wall came down, factory towns in eastern Germany and the former Soviet Union have been emptying out, forcing gov- ernments there to grapple with industrial and residential decay. Longer term, some European nations and Japan project na- tional population declines of 20 to 40 per- cent over the next 50 years, owing to their low birth rates. German researchers re- cently published two volumes under the title Shrink Cities, outlining strategies for managing urban decline around the world.

Closer to home, a shrinking cities ex- hibit currently on tour in Europe is set to ar- rive in New York next month and in Detroit in February. Also in February, the Institute

of Urban and Regional Development at the University of California, Berkeley, is hosting a symposium on the topic. Mean- while, the Shrinking Cities Institute at Kent State University is plotting provocative events in Cleveland, such as an urban camp- out. "We're trying to get people to recognize the change that's happened right under our feet," says Terry Schwarz, a Kent State planner. "It's a little surprising to see how much emptiness there is."

This isn't the sort of conversation most politicians are comfortable having. Instead of accepting decline and trying to manage it in a deliberate way, mayors tend to gravi- tate toward revitalization plans that involve building convention centers and sports are- nas and subsidizing hotels and shopping malls. They also get into desperate fights with the Census Bureau over population es- timates and counting methodology. "How many politicians in America will stand on a soapbox and say, 'I'm going to lead this city and we're going to shrink it?'" asks Joseph Schilling, a professor at Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute.

The urban planning profession is not

well equipped to handle shrinkage, either. Planning literature is fundamentally ori- ented toward growth and how to manage it. That's true of tools such as zoning regula- tions and pattern books, and it's true of plan- ning creeds such as New Urbanism and "sustainable development." As Schilling says, "We have two predominant planning models in this country. One is growth, growth, growth. The other is redevelopment.

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That third approach-rightsizing cities-is not something that we've done a lot with."

There's one more force that has quietly but powerfiuly prevented cities from coming to terms with contraction. As cities lose peo- ple, they also lose federal and state aid, even as the woes of concentrated poverty and surplus infrastructure worsen. Meanwhile, federal, state and local policies continue subsidizing new development in the sub-

,We're trying to get peqple to recognize the change tflat's hajppenedright under our Teet. I"nghu It"'Sc"

little surprising to see how much mptiness there is. -Terry Schwarz,

Kent State planner urbs and exurbs. "When you go to an eco- nomically struggling city in Europe, they are more vital and vibrant than American cities, even though they've experienced the same economic shocks such as loss of the steel sector or the decline of coal," says Bruce Katz, director of the Metropolitan Policy program at the Brookings Institution. "That's because they don't sprawl as much.'

New Faces Youngstown's cycle of industrial boom and bust may sound familiar. But few cities that have gone through that cycle fell so far so fast. The Mahoning Valley was the na- tion's third-largest steel-producing center. Then on September 19, 19 77-"Black Mon- day"-Youngstown Sheet & Tube an- nounced it was shutting down. U.S. Steel and Republic Steel followed suit. Seem- ingly overnight, 40,000 jobs evaporated. Steelworkers abandoned homes by the thousands, crime reached epidemic levels and a plague of corruption settled in, sym- bolized most infamously by former U.S. Representative Jim Traficant, who eventu- ally went to prison on bribery charges.

Lately, though, a new generation of civic leaders has come of age in Youngstown. Mayor Williams, a home-born banker who also worked as the city's community devel- opment director, was just five years old on Black Monday. Several key positions are in the hands of outsiders whose thoughts aren't haunted by ghosts of the mills. An- thony Kobak, Youngstown's planner, ar- rived from Cleveland in 2000. So did David Sweet, the president of Youngstown State University, who had previously been dean of

the urban affairs program at Cleveland State. A year later, Sweet asked Hunter Mor-

rison to join him. "Many of the politicians and the business leadership who were here when things collapsed either retired, moved or died," Morrison says. "One thing that happened in the 2010 planning process is people looked around and said, 'You know what? The boss is dead. We don't have to ask permission anymore."

The 2010 plan emerged from an un- usual town-gown partnership. One of Sweet's first tasks at Youngstown State was to create a new campus plan. Meanwhile, the city was gearing up to re-write its com- prehensive plan for the first time since 1951. Strategists on both sides saw the ben- efit of intertwining their efforts. The uni- versity, which sits on a bluff above down- town, is not only Youngstown's biggest employer but an obvious potential catalyst for new development. The city's deteriora- tion, however, is a liability in recruiting stu- dents and faculty.

The city hired Toronto-based Urban Strategies to help with visioning and public engagement. City officials posted get-in- volved ads in newspapers and on billboards, screaming such provocations as, "Our kids go away and never come back!" It worked. Neighborhood input sessions averaged 75 attendees. More than 1,ooo people twice packed the historic Stambaugh Audito- rium, first to learn about the overall vi- sion-induding the idea of acknowledging Youngstown's smaller size-and then to see the plan in greater detail. By the time of last November's mayoral election, the 2010 plan had become an agenda setter. Williams, who as community development director had become the face of the 2o0o process, won convincingly.

Green Option But now comes the hard part: figuring out what it actually means to rightsize a city's neighborhoods and infrastructure. Unlike the industrialists who bolted from Youngstown 30 years ago, the mayor can't simply shutoff sewers or stop plowing snow just because those services aren't economi- cal. What he can do is target city invest- ments where they will pay the greatest re- turn to Youngstown's quality of life. Williams hopes to entice residents to relo- cate out of neighborhoods that are too far gone to save. At the same time, he wants to

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focus on stabilizing transitional neighbor- hoods and keeping healthy middle-class neighborhoods from wilting. "What it means is in many instances you have to start saying no," Williams says. "That's not easy as a public official, when it comes to people with all sorts of ideas that are well intended but not necessarily realistic."

One example is the city's program for helping low-income people fix up their homes. Until recently, that aid has been dis- tributed on a first-come, first-served basis, going right down a waiting list, regardless of the condition of the neighborhood. Now, the Community Development Agency skips homes in far-gone areas. It's also looking at dangling rehab dollars as a carrot for people to move into more stable neighborhoods. "Does it make sense to invest $40,000 or $50,000 in a home that is on a street where more than half of the other homes have to be demolished?" Williams says. "Can we af- ford to keep investing that money on a ran- domly chosen basis and think that we're af- fecting sustainable positive change?"

Similarly, Williams has put a morato- rium on the construction of homes financed with low-income housing tax credits. Over the past decade, nonprofits have built new homes in Oak Hill and other declining neighborhoods, using federal tax credits and other state and local subsidies. The new vinyl-sided homes are respectable enough, but Williams believes that they, too, repre- sent a wasted investment. "We didn't have a plan and they popped up in areas that just didn't make sense," Williams says. "A brand-new house constructed between two houses that need to be demolished-we're not doing anybody a favor. It's not that we don't need decent quality housing for low-in- come individuals, but where we house them in the city has to be well thought out."

Many of Youngstown's shrinkage strategies are aimed at its massive aban- doned-property problem. There are 14,ooo vacant lots in Youngstown, and i,ooo derelict homes and commercial buildings sitting on them. Williams has quadrupled the funds available for demolition to $1.2 million-enough to take down about 350 homes this year. Another initiative, spear- headed by Mahoning County Treasurer John Reardon, is clearing a mountain of back taxes owed on those lots so that churches, businesses and residents can take ownership of them. His goal is to put

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Rust-Belt Shrinkage Population of selected cities, 1970-2005 % CHANGE,

CITY 1970 1990 2005 1970 TO 2005 Charleston, WV 71,505 57,287 51,176 -28.43%

Dayton, OH 243,023 182,044 158,873 -34.63

Erie, PA 129,265 108,718 102,612 -20.62

Evansville, IN 138,764 126,272 115,918 -16.46

Flint, MI 193,317 140,761 118,551 -38.68

Gary, IN 175,415 116,646 98,715 -43.72

Kalamazoo, MI 85,555 80,277 72,700 -15.03

Saginaw, MI 91,849 69,512 58,361 -36.46

Scranton, PA 102,696 81,805 73,120 -28.80

Syracuse, NY 197,297 163,860 141,683 -28.19

Utica, NY 91,373 68,637 59,336 -35.06

Youngstown, OH 140,909 95,732 82,837 -41.21

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

5,000 lots into productive use within five years. Most of the time, "productive use" simply means allowing homeowners to triple the size of their yards by buying the empty lots next door.

If there is a guiding principle in all this, it is that Youngstown can afford to be gen- erous with its land. That notion implies that stewardship is more important than the plat lines on Youngstown's maps. Look- ing at a row of empty lots tangled with veg- etation, you don't have to squint too hard to see wild prairie or woodlands-or even a wetland. There's environmental value here, but there's also economic value-develop- ers are under obligation to create a new wet- land when they destroy one somewhere else. Youngstown has commissioned a sur- vey of potential wetlands-in-waiting. De- velopers may come to value Youngstown land not because they want to build on it but because they don't want to build on it.

As Anthony Kobak sees it, the greening of Youngstown is also about enhancing quality of life. The city doesn't want to keep shrinking. It wants to make itself as attrac- tive as it can be for the people who've stuck it out. If it succeeds, perhaps one day Youngstown can think about growing again. "You could call it declining grace- filly," Kobak says, "but I like to think of it more as looking to be competitive and hav- ing the potential for growth in the future."

Back in the Ford Taurus, Kobak ends his tour of Youngstown at a conservatory that lies above the tip of Mill Creek Park. The

leafy park, designed by associates of Fred- erick Law Olmsted, is one of those 19 th- century gems, with boathouses and stone bridges, that even the wealthiest American suburbs are incapable of replicating today. If Youngstown is a size-6o suit on a size-4o frame, Mill Creek Park is its shiniest ivory button. There are others-a downtown with early 19oos skyscrapers, two solid art mu- seums, a symphony, the university. They are vestiges, ironically, that a city of 82,ooo could never possess unless it had once been twice that size.

Kobak leads a reporter though a trim and colorfil rose garden to a shaded stone terrace. This is the spot, he says, where newlyweds come on Saturdays to take wed- ding pictures. It's obvious why. The picture- frame view opens up on a lake below, sur- rounded on all sides by a thick green canopy of trees. "Here's the pitch," Kobak says. "Look how easy it is to get out of the city and into the country. We're right off the inter- state. Our housing stock is incredibly af- fordable. We're an hour from two interna- tional airports. Perfect for telecommuters, retirees, anyone trying to get out of the rat race. It's just amazing what's here.

"We know we're not going to be a city of 170,ooo as we were in our heyday," he con- tinues. "It will be a challenge. The city can decline more unless we do something about it. But I think we are trying to do that."

Christopher Swope can be reached at [email protected]

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TITLE: Smart Decline SOURCE: Governing 20 no2 N 2006 PAGE(S): 46-8, 50-2

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