Shrinking Cities, Shrinking World: Urban Design for an Emerging era of Global Population Decline
Name
Shrinking Cities_Shrinking World_Preproof_2019.pdf
Size
1.18 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
02a085934aa8da95ae32522112939cac
Author(s)
Ryan, Brent D.
Date Issued
June 19, 2019
Publisher
Routledge
Citation
Banerjee, T., & Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (Eds.). (2019). The New Companion to Urban Design (1st ed.). Routledge.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
During the mid-to-late 20th century, economic and social forces caused population decline in the
deindustrializing, “shrinking” cities of many developed nations, particularly in the United States,
northern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Urban designers struggled with varying degrees of
success to confront problematic conditions like housing abandonment, vacant land, and disused
factories. Germany, with abundant state funding and a design-oriented culture, achieved the
greatest success in instituting comprehensive design strategies for its shrinking cities. Today,
shrinking cities are growing in number as demographic decline resulting from income growth
drives population loss in northern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as in Japan, China,
Korea, Singapore, and Mediterranean Europe. Nascent urban design strategies include compact city
strategies in Japan and state-led housing consolidation in China. As demographic decline spreads
elsewhere in an increasingly shrinking world, novel urban design strategies will be required for an
ever more diverse range of urban built environments.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203731932
