Creative Class

We always think of urban planning as the preparation for population and job growth. But, should some cities  plan for population and job decline?

Today, I was on NPR’s To the Point to discuss shrinking cities and the idea of planning for communities that are experiencing significant population decline. For today’s conversation, Flint, MI served as an intriguing case study. Some communities like Flint, MI are actively practicing land banking.

Take a listen.

NPR’s To the Point: Honey I Shrunk the City: Bold Ideas for Declining Urban Centers

“For years, urban planning has been all about growth. But in recent years, with the decline of American manufacturing, a whole new school of thought has emerged. It’s all about shrinking, not growing. As more and more metropolitan areas lose populations and healthy tax bases, guest host Sarah Terry looks at how are cities coming up with new solutions to control the change, instead of simply trying to cope with it.”

Listen here.

Profile here.

Should cities and communities plan for shrinking populations? Can this be part of a comprehensive economic development plan for declining communities?

Jamie Galbraith says planning is the cure for America’s problems (via Planetizen).

“Planning” has been a dirty word in American politics for decades. For the hard-line right, planning destroyed freedom: it was the “road to serfdom.” Anti-planners also thought it a failure; for them the collapse of the U.S.S.R. was due to “central planning.” But without public planning, who is in charge? Lobbyists who represent the private planning of the great corporations. The public interest ceases to exist, and the public sector becomes nothing more than a trough at which private interests come to feed.

What the government needs most today is to regain an independent capacity to think. The government needs a way to imagine the future that is not dominated by lobbies or even by Congress so long as Congress is dominated by lobbies. Planning is a process: thinking, coordination, action. What is the long-term national interest? What specific targets must be met? What is the best way to do it, and who plays what role? …

Markets do not design new systems—new patterns of transport and housing, new technologies for electric power, for vehicles, for heating and cooling. To design a system, to put the pieces together, to identify the most promising lines of attack and take steps to achieve them: that is the planner’s role.

My PhD is in urban planning, so many might think I’m a proponent. But I’m more than just a little bit worried about planned solutions. Much of the time I find myself argeeing with Jane Jacob’s views on the subject – planning is a poor second to complex, self-organizing processes. And our economy, society, politics, and geography are surely a lot more complicated and complex than in her time. I’d like to believe that government can become independent of lobbyists and regain its independent capacity to think, but the realist in me asks: Is that really possible under our current system?