Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World

Barring radical technological advancements, population and even economic growth may reverse by mid century.

A host of strategies for shrinking cities are clear: greener space, urban agriculture, shared community spaces, cheaper housing, smaller community-based schools, telemedicine and more exist. Less carbon intensive shared resources are possible. But there are psychological, and therefore political, barriers to overcome.

“Each city will have to make a momentous choice between two diametrically opposed paths. They can follow the path of least resistance, remain caught in the globalization trap and face a likely future of progressive decline; or they can build a new, brighter future, based on a localized economy, while using existing emerging technology to remain network with the wider world.”

That’s from urbanist-author Alan Mallach’s 2023 book “Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World: Learning to Thrive Without Growth.”

With zero immigration, the United States will have declining population by 2034, per census projections. The UN expects global population to decline by 2100 for the first time since reliable estimates began. I’ve been interested in this topic, informing a recent story of mine and a longterm-future project I led last year. Mallach’s advice to local leaders: Reduce the dependence on a global world but still participate in it

Below I share my notes for future reference.

Here are my notes:

• “The great age of growth is ending”
• “Can we uncouple population decline from economy, decay, and impoverishment?”
• Famous examples of getting it wrong: Ehrlich’s population bomb and the Malthus trap (which was ending as it was coined)
• Harvey Molotch’s “growth machines” description of cities will end
• Taleb’s black-swan events and anti fragile will both merge on this topic
• Tel is a mound of left behind city in Middle East: there was rise and fall of cities
• Tel Gezer has 25 layers before abandoned for a tel to form
• See below chart from the book of the rise and fall of Rome and Beijing populations

• Historians disagree about when Harvey Molotch’s “growth machines” definition of cities began, because for early history cities did rise and fall: Did this modern era of constant growth begin in the English Industrial Revolution or Amsterdam 17th century or proto capitalist renaissance Italy?
• Mumford: cities went from “marketplace to market economy”
• Immigration and high birth rates in U.S.: 1840-1850, the U.S. urban population doubled
• City vs region vs MSA: Detroit city shrank while region grew; Columbus grew but primarily through annexation: what is a shrinking city? Are our borders more changeable than we realize?
• The covid-19-era pandemic declines in city population had more to do with fewer people coming than with more people leaving
• In the 1980s two German scholars coined a term translated as “shrinking cities”
• “Large, dominant, economic and political centers are likely to grow at the expense of smaller peripheral cities” (30)
• Demography: how many born and die; Migration: how many come and leave
• Demographic transition model: See the chart below from the book, charting how for most of human history we were high birth and high death rates

• “Average life expectancy was typically between 25 and 35 years. This figure is misleading, though, because roughly 1/4 of all children died in infancy, and another quarter by the age of 12. If one made it to adulthood, one could expect to live until 50 or 60.”
• Between 1000-1300 CE, Europe’s population doubled, with new agriculture like three field crop rotation and so we built grand cathedrals, then great famine and plague and the 100 years war; Europe didn’t return to the population it had in 1300 until after 1500
• Urbanization comes with near inevitable outcomes: Kids become costly not useful, women’s education and poverty drive fertility rates down
• Pro Natalist policies tend to be short lived (and expensive)
• “Iranian miracle:” family planning programs didn’t reduce fertility rates but rather contraception helped women make decisions they had already made
• Look at the below chart, in which the author argues even China’s ‘One child policy’ (1980-2015) may not have has the impact we think it had — it may have reflected what families were already doing . But it did impact gender balance, as families prioritized boys over girls

• France has generous pro family benefits but they’re highly expensive (4% of annual GDP) and still low TFR (total fertility rate) than replacement — If better than European countries
• Important concepts: Demographic momentum and Demographic dividend
• Jewish biblical founding has three migrations: Abraham leaving urban Ur for semi-nomadic shepherd life; Abraham’s grandson Jacob to Egypt from famine in Canaan and then exodus from Egypt when Moses led Abram’s and Jacob descendants to the promised land
• Demographers debate whether humans are by nature sedentary (and leave only for cause) or restless. (This overlaps with the book Dawn of Everything)
• Father of migration theory Georg Ravenstein: “the major causes of migration are economic “
• “Stadtluft macht frei “ Translated as “city air makes you free,” from the medieval-era shifting rural to urban
• Notably the millennials who moved to US downtowns were almost entirely college graduates; small number of empty nesters too (I’ve called this the Millennial dividend)
• Youngstown Ohio may be first in United States to cautiously accept that it is managing, not solving, population decline but only its past shrinking: its 2005 citywide plan accepted it as smaller than its past; Saginaw Michigan didn’t follow through with plans to transition a depopulated 350-acre area into a green zone; Johnstown, Pa city plan does not address its shrinking size and says it is rising without any evidence
• Simon Kuznets, who invented GDP, made a U-shaped curve to argue later market economies would better distribute capital. He was writing after WW2: “the feel good assumption that income inequality is self correcting by continued growth has largely been abandoned”
• Jodi Dean “hinterlandization” where spatial inequality creates lively areas surrounded by desolate hinterlands like feudal times
• Jevons paradox or rebound effects: making resources more efficient just makes us use more of them. (I’ve referenced that here)
• By 2050, global GDP could decline, connected to population decline ((My note from other perspectives: Or will AI, quantum computing and lab births create a new industrial age?))
• “I’ve discussed many of the reasons for the future growth slowdown in chapters 5 and 6, but it’s worth restating them briefly here: Since population growth is a major factor in economic growth, the decline in population growth will slow down economic growth. That decline will be particularly pronounced in the United States, EU countries, China, and Japan, which collectively account for the great majority of global GDP. Economic growth in areas that continue to see population growth, most significantly sub-Saharan Africa, will be depressed by climate change effects, poor infrastructure, limited utilization of human capital, and declining demand from the Global North. Declining population growth, and parallel declines in demand, will reduce capital investment, a key element in economic growth. The aging of the population will reduce both consumption and demand and reduce the size and productivity of the workforce. Climate change will reduce productivity through the effects both of higher average temperatures and of more frequent extreme weather systems and disaster losses.”
• Degrowth and steady-state economics part of new wave ((My note: There are degrowth critics, though the focus is primarily on environmental concerns, not seeming population decline)
• “Capitalism thrives on growth, likes growth and privileges growth. But it does not need growth.
• “Networked localism” in which more resources are developed locally by connected globally (p. 171)
• His four principles of localism: public services via public-private; education; quality of life and environment
• Cites Nowak and Katz’s ‘New Localism’ book as “insightful although somewhat rose colored”
• Colin Ward 30 years ago: “Population movements have enabled us to re-create within the cities the kind of environment that people leave the cities to find” like gardens and urban wild places
• German allotment gardens (armengarten or poor people’s gardens): created in response to rapid growth in cities but they could be used for shrinking cities too
• Urban ag is about social and cultural benefits not chiefly food supply: Raychel Samto ofJohns Hopkins
• Philadelphia first US city to take comprehensive green approach to CSO issues combined stormwater overflow
• Yu Kongjan: “sponge city”
• Author cites the PA Horticultural Society landcare program for Philly vacant land
• Shakespeare: the city is the people
• “Each city will have to make a momentous choice between two diametrically opposed paths. They can follow the path of least resistance, remain caught in the globalization trap and face a likely future of progressive decline; or they can build a new, brighter future, based on a localized economy, while using existing emerging technology to remain network with the wider world.”
• Declining school enrollments could be a chance for more smaller schools with community usage which suggests better student achievement. ((My note: Though Philadelphia and other cities have already confronted how difficult it is to close schools))
• Oklahoma example of nursing home that hosts kindergarten classes
• The US has a tradition of eminent domain that Europe doesn’t to reclaim underused space
• Pro-growth aging friendly inter-generational housing development
• Naturally occurring retirement communities (NORC-SSPs)
• Kiryu’s auxiliary workforce of younger older people
• Reduce the dependence on a global world but still participate in it
• Grid defection
• Xometry and NextFab shoutouts for supporting localized and distributed building
• Design global, build local
• Tulsa Remote and other programs that allow diffusion of jobs
• “The cities that benefit most are not likely to put be those that offer the largest dollar incentive, but those that offer the most desirable lifestyles in the most robust support system” (226)
• The Spanish paseo or its Italian passeggiata is the evening community stroll
• Moment in the 1970s for environmentalism: the EPA, Clean Water Act, 1973 book The Use of Land, Jimmy Carter renewable energy pledge and solar panels on the White House —Reagan removed them
• With zero immigration, the United States will have declining population by 2034, per census
• European cities are accepting it faster than American cities
• See my chart Feb 17 of number of Americans aged each year from 30 and lower
• Within 5 years, each year the next cohort of first time workers will be smaller than the one before: we will have to care about educational and skill quality of a shrinking workforce
• Innovation paradox: economist Wim Naude says technological innovation leading to a new Industrial Revolution “is a pervasive modern myth”
• Author’s assumptions for the United States: Deaths will outpace births by 2030, net immigration will remain at or below current levels of 500k a year and regional trends will continue leaving Midwest and old South
• Author’s estimates: Boston has 175k jobs in finance, insurance information and other scientific and professional services; if one third go remote over next 5-10 years, and between 1/3 to half choose to relocate , mostly households with two remote workers then it’s 15k-25k people: bad for Boston but not big when spread across even a few attractive other cities
• Pittsburgh and UPMC could fare well with an aging population, as might other health centers — up to a point.
• We don’t only have a skills mismatch. We have an identity mismatch
• Kathleen Dannemiller’s equation for a community’s ability to change: C= (D x V x F) > R
• Peoria is in the “globalization trap” in which the company Caterpillar is a major employer but not really connected to the local economy other than jobs — if that company fails or pulls out, then Peoria collapses. They need a more resilient and diversified local economy
• US kept at or above fertility replacement level until 2007 and Great Recession, whereas other rich countries had already fallen below
• Path dependence
• Germany’s Ruhr Valley is like industrial Midwest and its local governments are trying to figure out economic future in shrinking world
• Lithuania (which I visited in 2017) and Youngstown Neighborhood development Corp get lots of author praise