To learn more about the situation in the United States and Germany, .de – Magazin Deutschland sat down with Professor Christine Hannemann. She discussed her research into the past and future of shrinking cities.
Where did you conduct your research in the United States?
I decided to do my research in Flint, Michigan, because it demonstrates a special kind of deindustrialization. In Flint, there was one big car factory and everything closed from one day to the next. I wanted to know how people work with this process. Of course, a lot of people leave. That’s one solution. But there is still a city of Flint, and there are still a lot of people living there trying to deal with this situation. We learned that it is a very special situation in Flint. General Motors, the former main employer in Flint, has a big foundation called the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The Mott Foundation helps support the city. So a private foundation is actually heading urban policy work in Flint. The city is still totally dependent on GM. There is no other economic power.
How does the situation in the United States compare with Germany?
The situation is the same. In times of industrialization, a special type of city develops. These cities have a lot of economic ties to industrialized production like ships, or cars, or mining. When the production moves, because of globalization and so on, often factories are closed in a very short period of time. Now the cities are facing all the same problems: the employers moved and the residents lost their jobs. Then you have the next phenomenon of shrinking cities – that they are losing a lot of people. And depending on this process, if the people are leaving and if you have no economic basis, then you have infrastructure that you don’t need any more. It’s all too big!
How do communities deal with the idea that their cities are shrinking?
My research shows that the local elites don’t like to face this problem. No mayor wants to say, “Hey, we are a shrinking city. What’s up?” It is not good for local policy and you don’t gain voters this way. But after years the leaders start to realize the problem and change their policies. There are a lot of different ways they can deal with this. Some cities try to transform into a culture city, or a service city, or a big point of transportation. In the case of Flint, the city has ideas in the field of green energies, but it is all in the pipeline. Some of the cities don’t find another way so I call them “superficial cities”. In this case, you might consider reducing the life of a city to a point of zero like a modern ghost town.
How does a city not become “superficial”?
Some places are able to find new industries and different work. Maybe they change to become a university city, or they obtain the status to be a capital of culture, like Essen in North Rhine-Westphalia. In Gera, Thuringia, for instance, people are developing mushroom farms in slabs or high rise estates. There are some very interesting projects like this, and most of them are inspired by culture and arts.
What does Germany’s example tell us about the dynamic of shrinking cities?
The case of Germany is helpful to become more aware that the problem of shrinking is not only a problem of one small city, it is a problem of a society. You cannot leave these kinds of cities alone to help themselves. That is why the German government has developed some programs to better manage the shrinking process. The German programs Stadtumbau Ost and Stadtumbau West facilitate the downsizing of infrastructure like the demolition of apartments. But the main problem of shrinking cities is the loss of jobs. We need to give people a different perspective for their lives, and in this case we don’t have a lot of new ideas. But there are some people who want to change this bad situation. So if cities are lucky, they have what we call “Raumpioniere”, pioneers of the space, who are trying to develop something new.
