Alan Mallach

Is demolition the answer? No, and no thoughtful person who cares about cities will say that it is. Is it part of the answer? It depends on whether you’re asking the right questions.

If we look at Detroit, for example, we see a city which contains 40 square miles of vacant land and, by recent estimates, anything from 35,000 to over 50,000 vacant buildings. Buffalo, a much smaller place, may have 15,000 to 25,000 vacant buildings. These cities, and their counterparts – Flint, Youngstown, and others – have large areas where scattered occupied houses sit amidst prairies of vacant land and gaping, often fire-blackened empty houses. Many of the people in these houses are elderly homeowners, trapped by their poverty and by the reality that their house has, quite literally, no value. There are eight census tracts in Buffalo – where nearly 16,000 people lived in 2000 – where not a single home purchase mortgage was made in 2007.

This is not the total story. These cities have many vital, thriving neighborhoods, and many more where the fabric of the neighborhood is still strong but frayed, and the area is struggling against the forces of decline. Many of these neighborhoods, like Buffalo’s West Side, have dedicated citizens and organizations like the West Side Community Collaborative, who are fighting to hold their ground and reclaim their community. Sadly, as the foreclosure crisis and the recession deepen, it looks like more such neighborhoods are losing than gaining ground.

To understand what’s happening in these cities, we have to look beyond the individual neighborhoods, though, and look at the big picture. This is the reality check. The reality is that these cities are continuing to lose population and jobs, and are likely to continue down that path for some time to come. After all is said and done, even while recognizing the damage done by predatory lenders and greedy flippers, the fundamental reason Cleveland, Buffalo and their counterparts have tens of thousands of vacant houses is that the city and the region are not generating enough demand to keep them occupied. This is a long-term trend, and one that is unlikely to reverse itself in the next five or ten years, or even longer. The massive steel mills and automobile assembly lines that supported their historic populations are gone. Detroit will never have 1.8 million people again, nor will Buffalo have 600,000. If and when their populations stabilize, these cities are likely to contain little more than one-third their peak population.

Some people might argue that accepting the reality of population loss and low demand constitutes giving up on these cities. The opposite is true. If Buffalo, Flint and other like cities are to have a chance to come back as healthier, although smaller, cities, they are going to have to make some very difficult decisions. They will have to acknowledge what is already reality – that parts of these cities have gone past the point of no return, where they can no longer be saved by the actions of individuals and community groups, because they are no longer neighborhoods in any but a historical sense. At the same time, they must also recognize that many other areas in these cities still have the physical and social fabric that makes them viable urban neighborhoods, but which could easily go the way of the devastated areas elsewhere in the city unless they can assemble enough energy and resources to counter the economic pressures working against them. Those economic pressures are real and powerful. In contrast to Boston or New York, where even the most distressed neighborhood has a shot at the future by building on the strength of the regional economy, the weakness of the regional economy in Buffalo or Cleveland – particularly today – can drag down even a healthy neighborhood.

So what does this mean in terms of demolition? It means that demolition, instead of an end in itself, needs to become part of a strategy that acknowledges that viable but threatened neighborhoods need to be supported, and areas that have gone past the point of no return need to be recognized as such. In areas like the West Side Collaborative’s target area, an area with a strong urban fabric and historic houses abutting some of Buffalo’s prime neighborhoods, demolition should be a last resort, used only if a house is dilapidated beyond salvation.

In other areas, where scattered houses sit on blocks already largely abandoned, demolition becomes a way to make possible the greening of these areas. In most cases, this is not a matter of clearing entire sections of a city, and above all, nobody is talking about forcing any family to leave their home against their will. Some cleared areas will be small areas that could be used for community gardens, parks or greenways; others may be larger areas, and may end up becoming forests and even, perhaps, urban agriculture on a commercial scale. The work being done by Terry Schwartz and her colleagues at Kent State’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative shows how sensitive, thoughtful treatment of vacant properties, from individual lots through multiple blocks, can have a positive effect on a block, a neighborhood or an entire city.

Contrary to what some may believe, these ideas are not anti-urban, and is not aimed at “thinning out” urban neighborhoods and destroying the qualities that give them their value and distinction. It is that thinning out that is exactly what is going on today in city after city, not through public action, but through the status quo. Population loss and abandonment are inexorably destroying the urban fabric of one neighborhood after another, save for the handful with the capacity and leadership to bring them back from the brink. Without focused, targeted public action to direct resources to these neighborhoods, and support their efforts, far too many will be lost.

Unless America’s shrinking cities can rebuild the fabric of their viable neighborhoods – keeping their urban qualities intact – they will have little hope of revival. If they are to do that; they must recognize reality, and accept that a smaller population needs a smaller city, with far fewer houses than it once had, when it housed a population more than double today’s population. It is time we acknowledge this, put nostalgia and wishful thinking aside, and get on with the job.