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Sunburnt Cities: The Great Recession, Depopulation and Urban Planning in the American Sunbelt by Hollander, Justin B. (2011) Paperback
Excellent Book
Paperback
First published January 18, 2011
About the author
Justin B. Hollander
12 booksJustin B. Hollander is Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 22, 2020
Justin Hollander promotes planning for residents that have remained in declining cities with former production backgrounds. He creates a dichotomy which has proven shaky for the case of Flint, MI: Smart Decline or "right-sizing" neighborhoods for maintaining service quality at a scale to accommodate a smaller population v. leaving neighborhoods as they are and attempting the same quality of service.
The Smart Decline planning intervention promotes reducing housing stock and vacancies to the point of encouraging demolishing sound structures and "blotting" - adding a vacant lot next door to an occupied lot. The reduced housing stock will increase prices but this should not encourage developers to create new planned communities since the intervention would not have happened if the city in question was thriving.
I am writing this review with the hindsight of the Flint Water Crisis while this book was written following the etiquette of strong academic literature supported by earnest field work in 2011. The idealism of reducing neighborhood proportions to accommodate a reduced population is not translated into the dire implications of reduced city services given a smaller tax base. Given infrastructure investments (sunk costs) have been made to accommodate the existing housing stock of a city, expecting the maintenance of these investments when there are less people to pay for them is naive. In fact, Smart Decline justifies the abhorrent behavior of the city of Flint choosing the conflagrant Flint River over the expensive Detroit water system since the city only needs to provide water for the smaller population.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading about how terribly Fresno, CA was built without consideration for ancestral irrigation systems and how other cities in Michigan (Carriage Town, Grand Traverse) with engaged civil societies stopped their decline through planning tools.
The Smart Decline planning intervention promotes reducing housing stock and vacancies to the point of encouraging demolishing sound structures and "blotting" - adding a vacant lot next door to an occupied lot. The reduced housing stock will increase prices but this should not encourage developers to create new planned communities since the intervention would not have happened if the city in question was thriving.
I am writing this review with the hindsight of the Flint Water Crisis while this book was written following the etiquette of strong academic literature supported by earnest field work in 2011. The idealism of reducing neighborhood proportions to accommodate a reduced population is not translated into the dire implications of reduced city services given a smaller tax base. Given infrastructure investments (sunk costs) have been made to accommodate the existing housing stock of a city, expecting the maintenance of these investments when there are less people to pay for them is naive. In fact, Smart Decline justifies the abhorrent behavior of the city of Flint choosing the conflagrant Flint River over the expensive Detroit water system since the city only needs to provide water for the smaller population.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading about how terribly Fresno, CA was built without consideration for ancestral irrigation systems and how other cities in Michigan (Carriage Town, Grand Traverse) with engaged civil societies stopped their decline through planning tools.
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June 9, 2012Very interesting study based on the depopulation of cities. Examination of both rust belt and sun belt cities.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews