Shrinking cities, the hidden challenge E-Book

Malko Ebers

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2006

Beschreibung

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Sociology - Habitation and Urban Sociology, grade: A-, Yale University (school of management), course: management of global cities, language: English, abstract: This paper aims at casting light on the hidden challenge of shrinking cities. Its main hypothesis is that in the current debate on the effects of demographic change and city management shrinking cities are widely neglected but will be a major urbanization issue in the near future. The first part ’Growth and decline of cities’ presents and discusses world urbanization trends. Hereby the idea is to contrast trends of growing urbanization and population increase with the spreading phenomenon of shrinking cities. Furthermore the conditions for the rise and decline of cities are identified. Based on this more introductory part, the chapter ‘Cities with a past but no future?’ focuses on case studies of city shrinkage. Among the most often found cases in the literature, which are also highlighted in this paper are cities such as Detroit and Manchester.

Leseprobe

Table of Content

1. Introduction

2. Growth and decline of cities

2.2. Time, space and city development

2.3. Shrinkage and the death of public sphere

A6 : Population dynamics of broad age groups in East Germany

Page 1

Page 2

1. Introduction

The story of world demographics is a growth story and it is very closely linked to urbanization. Since the early 19thcentury population growth has accelerated dramatically. 118 years, this is the time it took to increase world population from one billion in 1807 to two billion. For the third billion reached in 1922 only 37 years were necessary and the jump from 5 to over 6 billion world population was done in an unpreceded 12 years1. The increase in world population has influenced many observers to use terms such as ‘explosion’ or ‘over-population’ and ‘mega-cities’. Indeed the growth patterns are very closely linked to a sustainable trend towards higher levels of urbanization. As UN data shows 3 billion people are already living in cities. This trend is continuing leading to 5 billion city dwellers by 2030 and the percentage of world population living in cities is expected to pass 50 per cent in 20072. In the public and also academic discussion of urbanization and world demographic trends, cities such as Lagos, Nairobi, Karachi, Dhaka or Mumbai are often the case studies for the enormous challenges growing cities have to deal with. These challenges have to do with growing scarcity of resources, collapse of infrastructure, poverty and environmental problems.

Although population growth and the challenges it presents for cities, mostly in the developing world, is a very serious issue, there is another topic deserving attention. Overall city populations are increasing but there is no single trend as there is no single city. Growth patterns vary very significantly between cities, countries and even continents. African cities such as Lagos and several Asian cities such as Bejing or Shanghai are expected to grow steadily at least for the next decades, whereas several cities in the Western world already show signs of decline and shrinkage. Former industrial centers such as Detroit, Pittsburgh or Manchester suffering from the economic shift towards a modern service industry are not alone. According to the Berkeley Institute of Urban and Regional Development: “Today,every 6thcity in the world can be defined as a “shrinking city”.”3.

1U.S. Census Bureau (2004): 1. As annex 1 shows the speed of population growth slowed down after 1999 so that world population will be growing but it will also be aging at a higher rate.

2UN Press Release (2004)

3Berkeley (2005): http://www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu/scg/index.htm. Since empirical comparative data on shrinking cities is very seldom these results/statements should be interpreted carefully.