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Youngstown’s plan is to embrace stunted growth. The “shrinking city model,” as it’s called, reasons that a city suffering post-industrial blues and losing residents by the thousands won’t suddenly charm people back by way of huge commercial bells and blockbuster whistles. Instead, the shrunk city demolishes blocks, converting its abandoned buildings and houses into open space for neighborhood enterprises and to nurture greenery. The method is fashionably known in Europe as “unbuilding the city,” finding purposes for the “terrain vague” — unused land and property — other than habitation, profit or attraction.

So far, only Eastern Europe has successfully enacted these “smart decline” plans, reducing dozens of cities where deindustrialization had taken hold in the aftermath of World War II. In Germany, cities such as Halle and Leipzig have effectively worked their shrinkage into sustainability in the years following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Old mills, factories and abandoned homes were put to creative use by the few residents left behind.

It’s a bit like telling a bald guy to shelve the Rogaine and the fancy toupees, and work instead with the little bit of hair he has. Youngstown is by no means the only U.S. city that’s balding. Virtually any city in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia that relied on steel production in the 20th century now struggles with the loss of its assets and former status. Unlike many of these cities, Youngstown is owning its population deficit. Through its “Youngstown 2010” plan, led by Mayor Jay Williams, the city plans to remain competitive by investing in 127 small neighborhoods throughout the region.

But how exactly does a city sustain itself while shrinking? By 2030, a population of 73,000 will become 54,000, which will eventually become 20,000 — and then what? Size may not matter, but density does, especially to solidify a tax base that can support schools and media. Is Youngstown sealing its fate by shrinking out of existence?

Virtually any city in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia that relied on steel production in the 20th century now struggles with the loss of its assets and former status.

A PLAN HATCHED BY TOWN AND GOWN

The name, “Youngstown 2010,” shouldn’t be confused with projected development goals, since none exist (at least none to be met by 2010). The year refers instead to census markers. “We don’t know how long this process will take,” says Phil Kidd, the city’s downtown events director and founder of Defend Youngstown, a self-described “movement dedicated to the advancement of the city of Youngstown” with a popular local Web site. “The implementation stage does not have a timeline. In 2010, we’ll stop and ask what’s working and what’s not working.”

William D’Avignon, the city’s deputy director of planning, adds, “We’re not saying everything we want to carry out will be completed by 2010, but we’re going to plan for anything that’s achievable by 2010.”

The idea of shrinking first occurred to Youngstown after closing out the 20th century with three consecutive decades of decline. On Sept. 19, 1977, “Black Monday,” the Sheet and Tube steel company closed doors on its mills, triggering the eventual closure of the rest of Youngstown’s steel industry. As population withered so did the housing stock, from over 50,000 units built before 1950 to just over 37,000 today. White flight reduced that demographic from two-thirds of the city in 1980 to less than half today; the black population rose from one-third in 1980 to 45 percent today. And if the 4,213 Hispanic and Latino-American population seems minute, bear in mind that that number is 200 percent higher than in 1990.

In the infant years of the new millennium, the city realized it urgently needed a new vision. Jay Williams was working as the city’s director of community development in 2001 when the planning department sought out the expertise of Youngstown State University (YSU), the leading employer for the city and Williams’s alma mater. YSU had plans in mind for its own growth, but ended up nurturing a rehabilitative partnership with the city. Williams, along with D’Avignon and Anthony Kobak, the current chief city planner, teamed with YSU academics piqued by the research of new urbanists such as Stephen Graham and Ann Markusen. Youngstown came to recognize itself, in the words of Markusen’s theoretical work, not as a “sticky” place —an urban center that continuously draws people (Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York City) — but as “slippery” — one where it’s easy for, say, a YSU student to slip into the city, and then slip out due to lack of jobs or housing.

“Our right-sizing plan came out of talks we were having internally acknowledging that although our population wouldn’t be going back to the hundreds of thousands, but that smaller didn’t mean inferior,” says Mayor Williams. “The question we asked was, because we were once so much larger how can we take the remnants of what made us large and build upon that?”

The planning team began to consider a counterintuitive approach to development: rather than grow the city, it should clean and “green” up the unoccupied real estate. They conceived and presented a basic “right-sizing” formula to the Youngstown public, who fleshed out the plan with their ideas and expectations. Or, depending on whom you ask, the planners consulted the public first and then drew up a blueprint for Youngstown 2010.

No matter its genesis, the eventual plan reflected three years of public surveys and town hall meetings aimed at understanding the city’s needs. “Overwhelmingly, people said they wanted the city shrunken, and they were for cleaning up the blighted situations that were causing different variations of decay, crime and abandonment,” Kidd says. Thousands of citizens were consulted, and hundreds of students and professionals logged the process. The plan went into high gear after Williams was elected mayor in 2005. At 34, he was the youngest mayor Youngstown ever elected, and also the first African American — two identity aspects that resonated with college students and the emerging black majority.

THE ANTIDOTE TO RACISM

“He’s kind of like the Barack Obama of Youngstown,” says Rev. Michael Harrison, pastor of Union Baptist Church in the Northside. “I was pretty skeptical of the 2010 plan in the beginning, only because I did not fully understand it. Once the mayor explained it to a group of us pastors, whom he brought together, and showed us exactly how we all could benefit, I bought it hook, line and sinker.”

Like Obama, Williams comes across as a figure whose blackness alone is the presumed antidote to racism. As Kobak says, “A lot of people use Jay Williams’s getting elected as mayor as a symbolic gesture of moving on, given our history of racial tension.”

African-American steelworkers in Youngstown and Western Pennsylvania have historically struggled with discrimination at least as far back as the late 1910s, when white labor unions went on strike against the steel companies. African Americans who were bussed in at that time were seen as scabs, although from their perspective, they were just taking advantage of previously unavailable opportunities.

Hostility toward African-American steelworkers has remained entrenched ever since. They have worked the least desirable and most dangerous jobs for the least amount of pay and lowest chance for promotion. Not until 1974, when the U.S. Department of Labor enforced a federal consent decree on companies practicing racial discrimination, did working conditions for African Americans begin to improve. But Black Monday arrived three years later, rendering the law moot by leaving scores of black men unemployed. Notoriously racist banks refused African Americans home loans, which left neighborhoods segregated all the way through the 20th century.

Ironically, Williams came from the banking industry before he began working for the city. “I started off as a young loan officer and making sure people weren’t signing up with fly-by-night loan predators,” says Mayor Williams. “I also spent time going out to neighborhood churches and community organizations to do outreach emphasizing the importance of working with local financial institutions and preparing themselves from a credit standpoint. I told the banks they have an obligation to lend on fair terms. But ultimately we were out there in the community educating the people as well. To this day, I still have people who will walk up to me with tears in their eyes talking about when they got their first home loan.”

The Youngstown 2010 plan lists improving residents’ quality of life as one of its “major vision principles” (its goals), a component aim of which is to “begin dealing with difficult issues such as public safety and racism.” The two often go discomfortingly hand-in-hand. To tackle crime, as one of his first acts, Mayor Williams increased the budget for demolitions of abandoned buildings, understood to be havens for criminals. Race is trickier, however, especially when it’s inextricably linked to labor and class. Kobak says the city has produced three television shows based on town hall meetings that address issues of race. But eliminating racism won’t be as easy as identifying buildings to tear down — longstanding ideas about race and class can’t simply be demolished and erased.

It’s acknowledged across the board that when cities shrink, the neighborhoods that end up most expendable are typically low-income and often predominantly African- or Latino-American communities. Kobak says these issues need not be seen as black-and-white — “People make them such.”

“What we’re trying to do is bring people from all walks of life toward a common cause,” says Kobak. “We want to remove all the racial issues and bring the city to the forefront by suggesting that these are neighborhood issues, not black-and-white issues.” So far, the consensus approach seems to have worked. Rev. Harrison, who’s black, says African Americans have been granted “equal opportunity and access” in the new plan, while Kidd says race hasn’t been a “major issue.”

CITIES SHRINK, BUT PROBLEMS GROW

Inevitably, unforeseen problems will impinge on Youngstown’s plan. For example, another labor conflict — this one not racially loaded — played out as recently as 2004, when the staff of the daily newspaper Vindicator went on strike for improved wages. One thing Youngstown possibly overlooked is that as the city shrinks, so does the circulation, subscription, advertising and revenue base for local media. City hall may not have been concerned with drawing people from other cities for growth, but the Vindicator was. With a depleted staff, but a mandate to continue publishing, the independent, family-owned Vindicator began recruiting journalists from as far away as New Orleans — while the strike was still in effect.

Another problem with shrinking is that fewer competing investors increases the chance for one or a small few to buy up more than a fair share of property — as is the case with downtown Youngstown, where Louis A. Frangos, the single largest property owner, occasionally poses a problem for those trying to preserve the city.

Among the many bank and realty office buildings he owns is the Stambaugh building, a 13-story structure of 531 windows, some of which had been crashing to the sidewalk. Frangos initially proposed getting rid of the building, calling it a “lost cause.” The building, however, has historic preservation status. When Frangos suggested replacing the broken windows with unsightly plywood, the city’s elite balked: a letter signed by 17 “prominent players” asked the mayor to have Frangos take better care of his buildings. The letter referred to his properties as “a real-life Monopoly game that is occurring in our downtown.”

“By no means do we think we have it all figured out,” says Kidd. “We all want to clean and green our city so that at some point we can be positioned for growth again, but right now we just have to clean up the house.”

SMALL TOWN BUSINESS

At the same time that the city prepares to shrink, the mayor and his planners are eyeballing potential growth through regional partnerships, including the neighboring municipalities of Austintown, Boardman, Camfield, Campbell and Struthers. Youngstown wants to establish a joint economic development district (JEDD) plan encompassing the Mahoning River Corridor. In the proposed arrangement, the suburban townships will depend on Youngstown’s water supply, and residents who work in the city will pay an income tax directed to business expansion efforts.

Youngstown expects the JEDD to produce some 3,750 jobs and $439 million in revenue over the next 20 years. The only problem is that suburbanites aren’t interested in financing Youngstown’s growth with their own income and water taxes. Some municipalities have retained lawyers specifically trained in JEDD policies to protect themselves from the plan.

For now, though, the principal growth efforts are community empowerment groups. Six neighborhoods, including Wick Park, which Kidd calls home, have been targeted for investment. In concert with the city and YSU, community organizations from each will establish their own development goals, to be executed by volunteer residents and reinforced by the city. Successfully implemented plans will serve as templates for other neighborhoods, as well as for future city-community governance. “A lot of people in this city are used to taking orders through a chain of command,” says Kidd. “In this instance, it’s a 50-50 partnership between the communities and the city.”

The downtown central business district is also being revived. Under the Youngstown Business Incubator program, start-up knowledge- and technology-based companies are nestled under one roof and assisted by federal grants. The one major requirement for inclusion is that the start-ups exchange notes so that they can build as a cluster. One company from this program, Turning Technologies, has already taken off, voted the top software company in the country last year by Inc. Magazine.

After two failed attempts, Youngstown also finally won the National Planning Excellence Award for Public Outreach last year, awarded by the American Planning Association. The lesson, apparently, is that sometimes you have to shrink to grow.

 

This article appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Next American City magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW!