Looking at the shrinking cities of the Midwest and Northeast as well as New Orleans, urban planning experts examine the conditions of disinvested places and lay out ways policymakers and planners can approach the future through processes and ideas that differ from those applicable to growing cities.

A number of U.S. cities, former manufacturing centers of the Northeast and Midwest, have suffered such dramatic losses in population and employment that urban experts have put them in a class by themselves, calling them "rustbelt cities," "shrinking cities," and more recently "legacy cities." This decline has led to property disinvestment, extensive demolition, and abandonment. While much policy and planning have focused on growth and redevelopment, little research has investigated the conditions of disinvested places and why some improvement efforts have greater impact than others.

The City After Abandonment brings together essays from top urban planning experts to focus on policy and planning issues related to three questions. What are cities becoming after abandonment? The rise of community gardens and artists' installations in Detroit and St. Louis reveal numerous unexamined impacts of population decline on the development of these cities. Why these outcomes? By analyzing post-hurricane policy in New Orleans, the acceptance of becoming a smaller city in Youngstown, Ohio, and targeted assistance to small areas of Baltimore, Cleveland, and Detroit, this book assesses how varied institutions and policies affect the process of change in cities where demand for property is very weak. What should abandoned areas of cities become? Assuming growth is not a choice, this book assesses widely cited formulas for addressing vacancy; analyzes the sustainability plans of Cleveland, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and Baltimore; suggests an urban design scheme for shrinking cities; and lays out ways policymakers and planners can approach the future through processes and ideas that differ from those in growing cities.

Introduction: The City After Abandonment

I. WHAT DOES THE CITY BECOME AFTER ABANDONMENT?
Chapter 1. Community Gardens and Urban Agriculture as Antithesis to Abandonment—Exploring a Citizenship-Land Model
—Laura Lawson and Abbilyn Miller
Chapter 2. Building Affordable Housing in Cities After Abandonment: The Case of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Developments in Detroit
—Lan Deng
Chapter 3. Detroit Art City: Urban Decline, Aesthetic Production, Public Interest
—Andrew Herscher

II. WHAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN WHAT CITIES BECOME AFTER ABANDONMENT?
Chapter 4. Decline-Oriented Urban Governance in Youngstown, Ohio
—Laura Schatz
Chapter 5. Targeting Neighborhoods, Stimulating Markets: The Role of Political, Institutional, and Technical Factors in Three Cities
—Dale E. Thomson
Chapter 6. Recovery in a Shrinking City: Challenges to Rightsizing Post-Katrina New Orleans
—Renia Ehrenfeucht and Marla Nelson
Chapter 7. Missing New Orleans: Lessons from the CDC Sector on Vacancy, Abandonment, and Reconstructing the Crescent City
—Jeffrey S. Lowe and Lisa K. Bates
Chapter 8. What Helps or Hinders Nonprofit Developers in Reusing Vacant, Abandoned, and Contaminated Property?
—Margaret Dewar
Chapter 9. Targeting Strategies of Three Detroit CDCs
—June Manning Thomas

III. WHAT SHOULD THE CITY BECOME AFTER ABANDONMENT?
Chapter 10. Strategic Thinking for Distressed Neighborhoods
—Robert A. Beauregard
Chapter 11. The Promise of Sustainability Planning for Regenerating Older Industrial Cities
—Joseph Schilling and Raksha Vasudevan
Chapter 12. Rightsizing Shrinking Cities: The Urban Design Dimension
—Brent D. Ryan
Chapter 13. Planning for Better, Smaller Places After Population Loss: Lessons from Youngstown and Flint
—Margaret Dewar, Christina Kelly, and Hunter Morrison

Notes
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments