cities growing smaller 71 (Terry Schwarz) - Cleveland Urban Design ...

The Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative has been engaged in issues of population
decline and large-scale urban vacancy since we launched the Shrinking Cities
Institute in 2004. Through the Institute, the CUDC has conducted charrettes, symposia,
exhibitions, and research initiatives to provoke discussion and debate about
Cleveland’s ongoing transformation.
The oft-quoted statistics paint a portrait of a city in decline: Cleveland’s population
peaked in 1950 at 914,808. By 2000, the city’s population had dropped to
478,403—below the 500,000 threshold that is the key to maintaining crucial levels
of federal community development block grant funding. The ambition at the time
was to grow the city back to 500,000 by 2010 through the construction of 1,500
new housing units each year. The city has had a remarkable housing boom in recent
years but even so, the city’s population has continued to decline. Most recent projections
have the city’s population dropping to 387,000 by 2016. (NODIS, 2008)
Although Cleveland’s ongoing population loss is undeniably difficult—politically,
economically and emotionally—it is still possible to approach this situation with a
measured blend of pragmatism and optimism. The city’s inventory of vacant land
is vast and growing. Vacant land and buildings pose a daunting challenge, but also
an unprecedented opportunity. The opportunity lies in the time we inhabit, this
moment of no longer and not yet, in which we can transform Cleveland into a more
dynamic, ecologically sound, and livable place.
Like other shrinking cities, Cleveland’s physical footprint is significantly larger
than what we need to support the current population. As a result, the city feels fragmented
and underutilized. The problem isn’t too few people, but too much space.
Surplus land undermines urban character and depresses property values. To address
this issue, two models have emerged in the literature about shrinking cities: a consolidation
model and a dispersion model. One of the earliest incarnations of the consolidation
model was the Green Urban Archipelago for West Berlin in 1977, envisioned
by architect Oswald Mathias Ungers. Ungers’ concept described micro-cities within
a city—areas of dense development concentrated in the most viable areas within the
existing urban footprint. All new development would be constrained to these urban
islands as a way of maintaining density and vitality within a context of depopulation.
Buildings outside of the activity nodes would be targeted for demolition, remaining
residents would be relocated, and surplus land would eventually revert to a natural
condition. 1 This model aims to create a new kind of city—a city of small, vibrant,
interconnected centers embedded in a high-functioning natural ecosystem. But it
would be very difficult to implement this vision because growth and decline in a
city are inevitably intertwined. In practical terms, determining which parts of a city
1. Jasper Cepl, “Oswald Mathias Ungers’s
Urban Archipelago for Shrinking
Berlin,” in Shrinking Cities Volume
2: Interventions, Ostfildern, Germany:
Hatje Cantz Verlag: 2006.
cities growing smaller 73