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Shrinking Cities Project
Shrinking Cities Project
SHRINKING CITIES
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Content
Introduction p. 2
Project Shrinking Cities p. 2
International tour p. 2
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Introduction
Between 1950 and 2000, more than 350 large cities (over 100.000 inhabitants)
lost a significant share of their inhabitants, among them 61 cities in the US.
While international urban discourse focuses exclusively on the growing megalopo-
lises and agglomerations, zones of shrinkage have been forming at the same time,
and are generally ignored even so the share of shrinking cities is continiously
growing.
Since 2002, “Shrinking Cities” - a project of the German Federal Cultural Foun-
dation [Kulturstiftung des Bundes] - has investigated the worldwide phenomenon
of urban shrinkage focusing four urban regions: Detroit (USA), Halle/Leipzig
(Germany), Manchester/Liverpool (Britain), and Ivanovo (Russia). In a second
phase of the project, ideas for alternative models of action and intervention
were developed. A network of more than 200 artists, architects, academics and
local initiatives participated in four years of investigations. The results were
presented in two exhibitions, several books, digital publications, and numerous
public events. Now, the Shrinking Cities exhibition, recently represented in the
Italian Pavillon of the Venice Architecture Biennale, is shown in New York and
Detroit as the start of an international tour.
With a combined exhibition space of 4,000 square feet, Pratt Manhattan Gallery
and Van Alen Institute will simultaneously host “Shrinking Cities” in New York.
The exhibition includes 32 contributions by artists, architects, filmmakers,
journalists, and researchers including Nikolaus Brade, Sergei Bratkov, Mitch
Cope, John Davies, interboro/CUP, Cedric Price, Bas Princen, Isa Rosenberger,
Christoph Schäfer, O.M. Ungers, and Ingo Vetter.
International tour
Following the New York exhibition, “Shrinking Cities” will be jointly hosted by
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit and the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloom-
field Hills, Michigan from February 3, 2007 - April 1, 2007.
Between the fall of 2006 and the summer of 2008, the Shrinking Cities project
will also present its work at seven further venues: Rousse, Bulgaria; Tokyo,
Japan; Liverpool, U.K.; Saarbrücken, Frankfurt and Dortmund, Germany; St. Pe-
tersburg, Russia. The international tour is funded by the German Federal Cultur-
al Foundation.
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Van Alen Institute will host part one of the exhibition, “Shrinking Cities,
International Research”, which examines the phenomenon of urban decline. The
four focus cities Halle/Leipzig, Manchester/Liverpool, Detroit and Ivanovo are
explored and represented in diverse forms of documentation by artists, archi-
tects, filmmakers, journalists, and researchers. Themes include a worldwide
study of shrinking cities, the change of urban landscapes, everyday practices,
and political conflicts under the conditions of urban decline.
The topics range from neglect and the appropriation of spaces through changed
forms of work to the development of innovative subcultures and criticism of
existing planning cultures. The resulting cross-references, which reveal what is
common to shrinking cities as well as their individual characteristics, placed
regional practices in the course of urban shrinkage within a superordinated
context and emphasized that urban shrinkage is a global problem and an opportunity
for cultural renewal.
Investigated Regions
After decades of decline, Manchester and Liverpool have become known in the last
10 to 15 years as prime examples of successful regeneration. With their prestige
projects, re-invigorated city cores and ever increasing house prices, both cities
should be inspirational for any shrinking city that turn-around is still possible.
This remarkable transformation in Liverpool and Manchester was initiated through
the emergence of a new musical subculture that made use of vacant buildings. The
cities’ image shifted from being depressed post-industrial towns to being cities
of culture at the cutting edge of urban cool. Both city administrations and savvy
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developers opportunistically took a proactive role in using this potential to
instigate public-private partnerships that created a feverish rate of building
projects in and around the core of each city. As well as this process of re-definition,
the de-industrialization of the region gave rise to new post-Fordian types of
employment such as the call centre industry, which is typified by insecurity,
over-flexibility and low pay. A heightening of social tension within inner
neighborhoods has resulted in an increased desire for security. Much attention
is paid to defensibility when designing new residential developments, and exist-
ing buildings are equipped with entire arsenals of security devices.
This discrepancy between the branded image of the city and more local conditions
reveals that the current status of each city remains fragile; the revitalization
of the city core has been accompanied by a continuing crisis in the outer inner
city areas that are characterized by high unemployment, abandonment, and contin-
ued population loss. Areas of growth lie adjacent to areas of intense depriva-
tion – unfortunately the often promised “trickle down effect” has simply not
occurred. To this extent the urban landscape of both these cities and the region
itself is polarized; success and failure lie side by side.
In the textile region northeast of Moscow the economic structures collapsed with
the end of socialism and the Soviet Union, and the industrial production sank to
a fifth of what it was. The number of births fell dramatically since 1989 and
life expectancy declined significantly. Particularly young people with a better
education left Ivanovo in search of work.
The project of Soviet modernization and urbanization of the territory remained
incomplete. Small communities still exist today without basic infrastructure,
and large construction projects were abandoned. Central planning has been
replaced by small architectural undertakings of individual interventions.
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Here globalization is a synonym for the ruptures in the economic network and
internationalism, and for the decline in technology and in the modern division
of labor. Machines were dismantled, the airport was closed. The city life adapted
itself to the rhythms of agrarian production cycles, since many city residents
were forced to revert to subsistence farming on the lots of their dachas or gardens.
Pre-modern and post-industrial practices overlap and develop new lifestyles.
The ideology of the collective identities of factory and party has been eroded.
It has been replaced by the flood of information through globalization, a universal
individualization and a cultural cosmopolitism of Barbie, Nike, and Coca Cola.
At the same time, local traditions are being called upon to bolster identity.
With the de-industrialization, the factory lost its central function in cultural
and public life – no comparable structures have been developed. The modern re-
gime of factory labor has yielded to a postmodern patchwork of individual ar-
rangements and initiatives on the basis of a finely woven social network.
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Contributions by: Robert Anderson, USA; Nikolaus Brade, D; Sergei Bratkov, RUS;
Mitch Cope, USA; John Davies, GB; Jeremy Deller, GB; Detroit Collaborative De-
sign Center (DCDC), USA; Laura Horelli, D; Jody Huellmantel, USA; Konrad Knebel,
D; Alexei Kononenko, RUS; Ines Lasch, D; Savva and Sergei Miturich, RUS; Toni
Moceri, USA; Kelly Parker, USA; Bas Princen, NL; Project Office Philipp Oswalt
(Anke Hagemann, Tim Rieniets et al.), D; Vera Samorodova, RUS; Albrecht Schäfer,
D; Christoph Schäfer, D; Alexander Sverdlov, RUS; Boris Spiridonov, RUS; Kathrin
Wildner, D.
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Exhibition 2 – Interventions
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Pratt Manhattan Gallery will host part two of the exhibition, “Shrinking Cities,
Interventions”, which presents strategies for action. It is divided into five
areas: “Negotiating Inequality”, “Self-Governance”, “Creating Images”, “Organ-
izing Retreat”, and “Occupying Space”. Commissioned projects range from artistic
interventions and self-empowerment strategies through architectural, landscape,
media and performance interventions, to new legal regulations and utopian visions.
To initiate strategies for action, the architectural magazine “archplus” staged
an idea competition, while the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation made direct commissions
and the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig awarded artists grants. The majority
of the projects were developed in close cooperation with citizens, local groups,
and institutions.
Concepts of action
Negotiating Inequality
Social ideals and images of space in the Modern period bore the stamp of equality.
Equal opportunities regarding living standards are to this day the proclaimed aim
of federal republican regional planning policies in Germany. Yet until this point,
with the onset of shrinking processes, it has become clear that spatial equality
is no longer a realistic target. On the contrary: the negotiation of inequality
is today on the political and social agendas. To what extent can spatial inequal-
ity be productively conceived? What chances for experimentation does it offer?
Does inequality offer scope for diversity or are social divisions inherent in it?
Self-Governance
The crises of state organization and economic development have put inhabitants’ self-
organization in the spotlight. They are expected to take the matter of economic,
social, cultural and urban developments in hand. Cutbacks in the welfare state
and the deterioration of public infrastructure and social services are generally
accompanied by the notion that society’s responsibility for equal opportunities
and support should fall on the individual citizen who, however, is provided
neither with the necessary resources nor the authority to make decisions. The
other side of the coin is that the “gaps” made available by state withdrawal
offer possibilities in shrinking cities for the development of social and cul-
tural initiatives of a liberationist nature, which can give rise to viable,
socially integrative and culturally ambitious activities.
Creating Images
In today’s media dominated society, a city’s image plays as essential a role
as do the so-called “hard-tools”, namely economics and planning. Images mold
perceptions of a city, be these the insider perspective of its inhabitants or
the views held by people from elsewhere. Precise marketing budgets, cliché-
ridden reports in the media, artistic image production or personal memories are
only a few amongst the many cornerstones on which an overall image is construct-
ed, negotiated and discussed. Shrinking cities in particular endeavor to over-
come the negative effects of urban crisis on their reputation by investing heav-
ily in creating a positive image; and by either strengthening or inventing local
highlights in order to boost their economic, social or cultural standing.
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Organizing Retreat
Shrinking means the dissolution and degeneration of traditional urban structures.
It is impossible to completely halt these processes. The task of architects and
urban planners is thus restricted to regulating and elaborating these processes.
They are faced, in this regard, with a wholly new task for which nothing in their
previous experience has prepared them. Dealing with the demands of architecture
and infrastructure in shrinking cities thus requires architects and urban planners
to remain open, both to new methods and experiments and to innovative ideas
about what a city and its planning can be.
Occupying Space
The capitalist logic of extracting the optimal surplus value from everything
runs up against a wall in shrinking cities. Foreclosure sales and bankruptcy are
the order of the day, private investors few and far between. The spatial vacuum
and its attendant weak economy demand new financing and trade concepts. Usual
modes of utilization must be extended to include temporary, ephemeral, non-
bureaucratic and self-organized models that both exploit the potential of the
space available in shrinking cities and give local protagonists the chance to
take on disused land or property and use these in unconventional ways.
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Contributions by: Center for Urban Pedagogy (Damon Rich, Rosten Woo) and Inter-
boro (Tobias Armborst, Daniel D’Oca, Georgeen Theodore, Christine Williams),
USA; project group Claiming Land (Stefanie Bremer, Dirk E. Haas, Päivi Kataikko,
Henrik Sander, Andreas Schulze Bäing, Boris Sieverts) with Bas Princen, D/NL;
complizen Planungsbüro, D; project group COW – the udder way (Gareth Morris,
Heidi Rustgaard, Eike Sindlinger, Ulrike Steven, Susanne Thomas), GB; fiedler.
tornquist, A; Tammy Lynn Evans, USA; Tyree Guyton, USA; Pierre Huyghe, F; OMA/
AMO, NL; Cedric Price, GB; Raumlabor, D; Isa Rosenberger, A; Oswald Mathias
Ungers, D; Ingo Vetter, D.
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Friday, January, 12, 6:30 PM, film
Creating Images: Music Culture
Elliot Eastwick: “The Sound of Two Cities”, GB 2004 [tbc]
How did the sounds from Motor City Detroit influence Manchester’s music scene?
The label-maker and DJ Elliot Eastwick from Manchester reveals direct connec-
tions between the music cultures of two shrinking cities.
Center for Architecture
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Center for Architecture admission: $10 members, $15 non-members. All other venues
are free and open to the public.
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