Shrinking Cities, Shrinking Households, or Both?

Abstract

Household size decline accounts for a substantial portion of population loss in shrinking cities, yet little research has focused on it. Much of the literature presents a simple growth/decline binary that is largely determined via population figures. In this paper, we highlight the importance and assess the impact of household size changes on population decline, and determine what types of household size declines are more acute in shrinking cities than other locales. We find that elderly households and households with school-aged children are under-represented in shrinking cities, while households with preschool aged children are over-represented. More tellingly, we find the biggest source of household-related loss in shrinking cities to be the growth of single-person households now living in houses that were once home to entire families. These findings puncture the binary on which much of the shrinking cities discourse is based. The population dynamics of most cities are subtler than either practitioners or critical scholars assert. We argue that plans and development strategies for shrinking cities should reflect a range of demographic changes, including outmigration and internal household restructuring.

The Prevalence of Prosperous Shrinking Cities

“…The demographic shift in household sizes alone has contributed considerably to changing population structures in many citiesregardless of prosperity or decline. Philadelphia lost 26 percent of its population between 1950 and 2010, but if household sizes had remained at the 1950 level, the city would have actually grown by 1 percent (Hartt and Hackworth 2018). Shifts in the number and size of households can also reflect migration patterns between the central city and its surrounding suburbs.…”

“…Population loss can lead to the exodus of affluent residents and poverty traps for those with lower socioeconomic statuses (Fol 2012), but population loss can also be driven by the shrinking household sizes and birth rates of a prosperous population (Hartt and Hackworth 2018). The effects of population loss may push people away, but they may also motivate current residents to stay and others to come.…”

Emerging anti-poverty infrastructural gaps in suburbia: Poverty and the voluntary sector across Metropolitan Sydney

“…For instance, in Baltimore, certain inner-ring suburbs from the immediate postwar period were already showing signs of down-filtering by the 2000s (Hanlon, 2008; Hanlon and Vicino, 2007), all set within severe fiscal imbalances at the metropolitan scale where governmental expenditures and infrastructure usually benefit already well-off cities (Joassart-Marcelli et al., 2004). The American discourse around emerging suburban poverty intertwines with old fears around urban decline and blight (Hartt and Hackworth, 2018; Schafran, 2013). Taking the Bay Area as an example, Walker and Schafran (2015) note that far-flung suburbs are taking in the working poor and the working class that would otherwise live closer to their central-city jobs, thereby binding the prosperity of coastal areas to the relative decline of less expensive exurban suburbs.…”

Vacancy and property values in shrinking downtowns: a comparative study of three New England cities

“…Shrinkage has been explained by everything from natural disasters (Vale and Campanella, 2005), deindustrialization (Bluestone and Harrison, 1982), demographic shifts (Hartt and Hackworth, 2018), suburbanization (Jackson, 1985;Clark, 1989), globalization (Sassen, 1991;Hall, 1997) and the boom and bust economic cycles (Rust, 1975). Many shrinking cities scholars have taken a more holistic view, positing that urban growth and decline are a global multifaceted phenomenon, deeply related to broader metropolitan and global processes that include demographic change, economic restructuring, deindustrialization and suburbanization (Audirac et al, 2012;Martinez-Fernandez et al, 2012a, 2012bHaase et al, 2013;Hartt, 2018b).…”