Ecology for the Shrinking City

Abstract

This article brings together the concepts of shrinking cities-the hundreds of cities worldwide experiencing long-term population loss-and ecology for the city. Ecology for the city is the application of a social-ecological understanding to shaping urban form and function along sustainable trajectories. Ecology for the shrinking city therefore acknowledges that urban transformations to sustainable trajectories may be quite different in shrinking cities as compared with growing cities. Shrinking cities are well poised for transformations, because shrinking is perceived as a crisis and can mobilize the social capacity to change. Ecology is particularly well suited to contribute solutions because of the extent of vacant land in shrinking cities that can be leveraged for ecosystem-services provisioning. A crucial role of an ecology for the shrinking city is identifying innovative pathways that create locally desired amenities that provide ecosystem services and contribute to urban sustainability at multiple scales.

Figure 1.

Vacant parcels in of Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland has in excess of 20,000 vacant lots that occupy more than 14 square kilometers (Gardiner et al. 2013), approximately 7% of all the land in Cleveland. The inset is a portion of the Slavic Village neighborhood, in which ecosystem services are seen as a major component of shaping the neighborhood’s future. Vacant lots have been converted to rain gardens to provide multiple ecosystem services, including managing stormwater to reduce sewer overflows, provide wildlife habitat for beneficial insects, and improve aesthetic quality along the paved trail that facilitates recreation and transit alternatives to the personal motor vehicle.

Figure 2.

The graphic conceptualizes the social–ecological dynamics of land parcels in shrinking cities in an amenities–ecosystem services framework. Traditional land covers or land uses of parcels, such as houses and businesses, can have a high amenity value but low ecosystem-service value; it is depicted by a photograph of a street in Cleveland from the 1950s (lower right), the last decade of the heyday for many of the high-vacancy neighborhoods in Cleveland now. The abandonment and demolition of the built structures result in a loss of amenity value provided by the previous condition and can become a disamenity in the form of blight (lower left). The blighted property may provide greater ecosystem-service value, especially as vegetation cover increases; however, the property is typically not providing amenity value (upper left). Creating both high amenity value and high ecosystem-service value out of the vacant land in shrinking cities is the transformation that an ecology for the shrinking city can inform and help shape (upper right). Photographs: Three of the photos are in the public domain, with Wikimedia photographer credits of John Vachon (lower right), Fortunate4now (lower left), and Garrett O’Dwyer (upper left); the upper right photo is courtesy of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.