Shrinking urban areas can reinvent how cities work

Urban farming, new creative public spaces, and inner-city wildernesses are among the innovations that citizens can employ when urban populations start to decline.

The University of Edinburgh is hosting a special conference to discuss how this contraction actually presents opportunities for communities. International experts will share how cities around the world manage underutilised land.

In Thessaloniki, Greece, for example, locals have taken over an abandoned military camp and are farming in ad hoc collectives. In Chicago vacant lands are being explored as native seed banks for potential natural capital restorability.

In Sarajevo, Bosnia, the city’s south-eastern edge has shrunk following the war in the 1990s. The wilderness from nearby Mount Trebevic has now swept in and reclaimed urban areas. In East Germany Leipzig is one of the most successful examples of underused urban land being converted into green spaces.

And in the Great Lakes region of the US, cities are planning on using vacant plots to innovate how they manage storm water and reduce flood risks.

A great number of European and North American cities are shrinking, according to recent figures gathered by Professor Karina Pallagst from Kaiserslautern University of Technology, the conference’s keynote speaker.

180 out of 280 North American metropolitan areas are either stagnant or declining. In Europe, 57% of 220 large and medium size European cities, and 54% of the larger urban areas lost population between 1996 and 2001.

Urban shrinkage doesn’t necessarily mean a dead end scenario for cities. Many examples worldwide indicate that when the challenge is acknowledged and creatively faced, positive outcomes can arise.

Francisca Lima

The conference and associated exhibitions will bring scholars, designers and artists from around the world to share the latest thinking regarding opportunities presented by underutilised lands.

Mark Eischeid