Luck of the map: Away from the coast, “legacy cities” are still shrinking

New population estimates released last month showed that several major cities on the East Coast, including Boston, are in a period of renewed growth — while mid-sized urban areas, including most of the Gateway Cities in Massachusetts, are growing at a slower pace and have a more uncertain economic future. The situation is bleaker in the so-called Legacy Cities of the nation’s Rust Belt, some of which have no hope of ever being as populous as they were 60 years ago.

Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities , recently published by the Cambridge-based Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, gives a good overview of the challenges facing these still-declining urban areas. It also reveals some possible advantages for our own Gateway Cities, which are generally more compact, less burdened by abandoned properties (such as these in Detroit), and more attractive to immigrants.

Authors Alan Mallach and Levea Brachman define Legacy Cities as former “industrial powerhouses” that have suffered from job losses and from declines of at least 20 percent from peak populations. Most have also missed out on the “back to the city” trend that has benefited Boston. In the most recent population estimates, Youngstown, Ohio; Flint, Michigan; and Detroit were the fastest-shrinking cities in the U.S.

The authors ask whether newly thriving cities can be attributed to public policy or to “place luck,” noting that coastal cities have fared better in recent years: “Compared to Cleveland or St. Louis, cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia are doing well. The latter two cities are located in growing regions closely linked to the powerhouse New York and Washington, DC regions.”

That pattern also holds in New England (in our earlier post, we noted that recent population growth is highest in the cities that are close to Boston or New York), and the Lincoln Institute authors are somewhat optimistic about the favorably situated urban areas:

Coastal cities, as a group, are seeing more population stabilization, reflecting both increased immigration and the greater overall economic strength of the Northeast compared to the Midwestern Rust Belt. Both Philadelphia and Newark have seen their populations stabilize after decades of population loss. Many smaller coastal cities have also seen population growth, often reflecting Latino and to a lesser extent Asian immigration. [See Page 19.]

The authors see more danger signs in still-shrinking cities — including dozens in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio:

… many legacy cities are becoming dystopian versions of what could be healthier cities. With fewer and fewer homes and businesses to serve, cities continue to maintain an increasingly inefficient infrastructure at great cost, or allow it to disintegrate. Economic activity in these cities is scattered and fragmented with vacant office buildings and storefronts interspersed among viable businesses and institutions, while once-vital neighborhoods are being eroded by disinvestment, declining public services, and lack of confidence. Despite the fact that disinvestment and abandonment threaten residents’ public safety and property values, many cities are making little systematic effort to use the resulting vacant land and buildings in ways that contribute to a better quality of life or are environmentally sustainable. As a result, vacant properties accumulate and continue to blight their surroundings. [See Page 29.]

The Gateway Cities of Massachusetts may not have blight on the scale found in Detroit, but they still have significant work to do to repair their physical fabric. Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities spotlights revitalization strategies that may work at any scale, such as Baltimore’s “Vacants to Value” program: “a model approach in which code enforcement tactics are adjusted to reflect neighborhood market conditions and integrated into broader strategies involved in putting vacant properties back into productive use.” (For a similar strategy, see our earlier post on New Bedford’s “Side Yard Program.”)

The authors also recommend more cooperation between Legacy Cities and their surrounding communities, which could take the form of regional marketing by economic development agencies, as well as shared service agreements (SSAs) that spread the costs of public safety and other government functions across municipal lines. (The authors are more cautious about the benefits of cities annexing surrounding areas, which is pretty much a nonstarter in New England anyway.) They also recommend that Legacy Cities identify and leverage assets that are not as vulnerable to economic downturns, such as universities, hospitals, and cultural/recreational institutions — a process well underway in many Gateway Cities here in Massachusetts. (See the MassINC report Building Vibrancy: Creative Placemaking Strategies for Gateway City Growth and Renewal.)

Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities concludes with 10 broad recommendations for reversing the course of former manufacturing centers:

• Rebuild the central core.
• Sustain viable neighborhoods through targeted investments.
• Repurpose vacant land for new activities.
• Use assets to build competitive advantages.
• Re-establish the central economic role of the city.
• Use economic growth to increase community and resident well-being.
• Build stronger local governance capacity and partnerships.
• Increase the ties between legacy cities and their regions.
• Rethink state and federal policy toward legacy cities.

For more, see our earlier post on the report Revitalizing the Legacy Cities of Upstate New York.

– Robert David Sullivan