Week 8

I am struggling to understand what makes Hollander’s smart decline theory “foundational.”  He chooses as his paper scope “shrinking cities”, i.e. those cities whose population has been in decline for more than two years.  He takes issue with previous depopulation theories which stress either, A) the organic grassroots process of reinvestment and rebuilding by local community members, or B) the top-down process of investment that governments employ to “inject” new life into a declining area.  He argues there is a sweet-spot in the middle that harnesses both governmental programs and community efforts to manage depopulation. 

Hollander’s foundational theory is, briefly, that multiple stakeholders must be engaged in a politically-transparent process to manage decline.  Tell me something I don’t know.  He then leaps from this conclusion to assert that “neighborhoods can have more green space, streets can be less congested, more food can be locally produced,” etc. (pg. 363).  My belief is that this theory paper has ignored the tangible outcomes to focus on fantastical process.  I believe a more useful framework for designing “smart decline” strategies is established by Fainstein, whose outcome-oriented approach demands, “just distribution, justly arrived at” (pg. 357).