ABSTRACT

It has been more than ten years since the publication of the Youngstown 2010 Citywide Plan (City of Youngstown 2005), but it is still mentioned as an important transition point by urban political economists (Bernt 2009; Rhodes and Russo 2013; Schatz 2013). The document was the first in the United States to publicly acknowledge, and begin to plan around, the reality of population shrinkage. By publicly acknowledging that “Youngstown is a smaller city”, officials were able to embark on “A strategic program … required to rationalize and consolidate the urban infrastructure in a socially responsible and financially sustainable manner” (City of Youngstown 2005: 18). Since 2005, at least four other American cities and several European cities have initiated ‘right-sizing’ plans similar to Youngstown (Bernt 2009; Hackworth 2015). These plans broach what was previously seen as politically toxic – openly acknowledging that growth might not be happening or be likely to occur in the future. The erstwhile growth derangement syndrome has largely been responsible for counterproductive and expensive measures like massive infrastructure projects, and unmoored suburban growth, so plans like Youngstown 2010, and Detroit Future City (Detroit Works 2012), are understandably celebrated by progressive scholars as a welcome circumvention of the power and structure of growth. To Schindler (2016: 820) this marks a shift to “degrowth machine politics whose objective is to improve the quality of life in the city rather than simply augment the value of land and spur economic growth”. More broadly, some have begun to suggest that the notion of urban politics being completely dominated by a growth machine is outdated (Purcell 2000). The ideology and structure of growth has been disrupted, and as a consequence urban politics is different now than it was when Molotch (1976) introduced urban politics students to his growth machine concept.