A radical proposal: Policy and design to create smaller, smarter cities in the United States

Smart shrinking, as policy intervention for declining cities, has yet to be completely developed in the United States. As a term and concept borrowed from German planning literature, it offers an alternative approach to standard growth-oriented planning models. What it proposes is a radical, yet feasible, paradigm shift in the way that city officials and residents alike view the function of cities. No longer is the city's purpose viewed only as growth machine. Rather, under smart shrinking, cities are viewed as free to tailor urban policies based on actual population projections instead of unrealistic expectations of growth. Smart shrinking provides the means to downsize the physical infrastructure of cities. It rids itself of past negative connotations of decline by focusing on the empowering effects that such a shift offers to cities. What would be labeled as "failure to grow" under growth-centric policies becomes an accomplishment of shrinking under the proposed new paradigm. This thesis investigates and interrogates the history of smart shrinking, the ways in which these policies can be implemented in the US, and the benefits of smart shrinking over growth-oriented planning policies. It uses the cities of Youngstown (Ohio), Leipzig (Germany), and Bradford (Pennsylvania) as case studies.