Despite the fact that recent studies have shown that suburbia is growing more varied in terms of class and ethnicity, raising issues of belonging and identity, it has rarely focused on immigrants' social (dis-) mobility and effects on place attachment. Using a Bourdieusian perspective regarding people's habitus, this study examines the formation of local identities and place attachment among Latinx immigrants (first and second-generation) from Massachusetts' Merrimack Valley. The study examines how immigrants of various socioeconomic realities express their habitus and adapt it to their urban and suburban communities of residence. The 28 in-depth interviews of the study indicate how the sets of interviewees claimed to feel both at ease in and alienated from their current communities, demonstrating that the habitus was more than just a reflection of the informants' social reality. This reveals how the connection between residential area and habitus emerges locally and is only partial for both groups studied. Habitus in this regard is more than just a particularized variation of the social structure in each sort of settlement. The findings highlight the need to carefully consider the many social class disparities that explain place identity and belonging, as well as their effects on people of minority ethnicity immigrants' assimilation in receiving cultures.

Coming to prominence in the early 2000s, makerspaces have become a popular strategy for community development, neighborhood vitalization and education initiatives. However, challenges in defining and communicating the value of makerspaces limit their inclusion in policy and community development initiatives. This article fuses approaches from urban design, planning and cultural anthropology to outline a novel approach to understanding the value of a makerspace. We argue that makerspaces can help to (re)produce the unique culture and character of their host communities. This study surveyed 43 makerspaces in the Northeast of the United States, identifying four broad typologies categorizing how makerspaces relate to their socio-material contexts. We look to these typologies to identify commonalities and differences in the ways that makerspaces contribute to and are shaped by their host communities. Our study offers a community-centered approach to valorizing makerspaces. These findings have implications for future policy, social investment and community development initiatives.

Sustainability assessment frameworks often fall short of elucidating context-specific conflicts inherent in planning practice and its contribution to diverse sustainability priorities. This study explores the integration of priorities and principles associated with sustainability in the spatial planning of the sub-Arctic city of Yakutsk. It also investigates how conflicting priorities manifest in the city's development. The research involves exploratory interviews with planning stakeholders, an analysis of General Plan iterations, and profiling of two expanding residential areas. Contrasting cases of residential growth untangle tensions between environmental, development, and social dimensions, emphasizing the prioritization of specific aspects over others. The study underscores that these tensions are intricately linked to historical, political, planning, and governance contexts and reflect the complexities of urban development politics. Despite planning documents encompassing a range of principles associated with sustainable planning, current practices prioritize specific dimensions but contradict others. A targeted emphasis on specific sustainability aspects may obscure interests in particular development types and equity compromises. This study raises concerns about the effectiveness of normative evaluations of sustainable planning, overlooking conflicting dimensions evident in practice. It calls for a more in-depth examination of how principles are valued, prioritized, and compromised in specific contexts.

We examine conformance and performance dimensions of demolition recommendations in seven "Neighborhood Action Plans" (NAPs) issued between 2015 and 2017 in the shrinking city of Youngstown, Ohio. We use geographic information systems (GIS) to compare plan-suggested and actual demolitions. We examine whether overall statistics are similar and who was responsible for demolition. We conduct interviews with informants to understand causality. We find that NAPs are better implemented from performance than from conformance perspectives, but that nongovernmental organization (Land Bank) demolitions conformed more closely than local government. Interviewees provided several causes: procedural differences, overlapping responsibilities, influence of political decision makers on plan implementation, and shifting NAP goals.

This study investigates the spatial effects of the ongoing “decommunization” campaign in Ukraine, a state-led attack on Soviet symbols and ideology in the urban space of the capital, Kyiv. We examine decommunization through the lens of an extensive legacy of architectural, urban design, and monumental art projects erected for the celebration of the 1500th anniversary of the city of Kyiv held in 1982. We focus on four ideological narratives and examine the outcomes of decommunization on four monuments. We find that decommunization’s effect is limited; Communist symbolism has been annotated with Ukrainian identity symbols or neglected, not demolished. We conclude that decommunization has focused on the comparatively superficial qualities of toponomy and Lenin symbols, that the legacy of Soviet identity in Kyiv’s cityscape is much deeper and has proved surprisingly persistent, and that the historiography of the newly independent nation of Ukraine is still in a process of reformation and revision.

Plan monitoring is broadly believed to address plan obsolescence. We inquire to what extent neighborhood plan monitoring meetings enhanced implementation conformance over that achieved by original plans in the shrinking city of Youngstown (OH), via a monthly-based longitudinal evaluation of demolitions. We find that monitoring meetings' recommendations diverged rapidly from original plans; that a combination of monitoring and plans maintained a stable conformance ratio; and that plan monitoring is more important for politically unstable implementation actors than independent actors. We conclude that plan monitoring is a valuable but challenging tool to react to uncertainty by offering suggestions for improved plan monitoring.

Demolition is one of shrinking cities' most important strategies to deal with vacant and abandoned properties, but processes and outcomes vary between nations. How do demolition patterns differ or agree between shrinking cities in different nations, and what explains agreement or difference? This study analyzes demolition patterns in two mid-sized, isolated shrinking cities, the U.S. city of Flint and the German city of Dessau, between 2002 and 2016. We found significantly different patterns of demolition in the two cities. Demolition is more concentrated in Dessau, and more diffuse in Flint. We explain this difference in demolition patterns through three factors: housing tenure, social and physical structure, and demolition policy. Compared with Flint, Dessau has a much higher level of rental housing that concentrates in its urban center, facilitating tenant relocation into analogous units and permitting concentrated demolition. Flint's urban structure is homogenous with repetitive blocks of privatelyowned single-family housing, presenting a barrier for public intervention in vacancy. Dessau's demolition is financed by federal policy with explicit spatial intentions, whereas Flint's demolition is complaint-driven without substantial spatial consideration. The study findings indicate that demolition pattern is embedded in structural, historical, and national factors.

This study examines the evolution of Philadelphia’s city block morphology between 1683, when the city was planned by William Penn, and 1900, when urban expansion abandoned the grid. The study uses both quantitative and qualitative assessment. The city grid underwent evolution during this time that resolved deficiencies of the original Penn plan, improving circulation and maximizing block area for rowhouse development. The Penn grid had large rectilinear blocks with irregular dimensions: it experienced two types of evolution. The first was adaptation through infill, as large 1683 blocks were subdivided by secondary through streets and tertiary streets. The second was adaptation through expansion of the grid, first an irregular, ‘unplanned’ grid, and later a regular, ‘planned’ grid. Both expansions reduced 1683 block depths to permit additional east-west circulation and to increase developable block frontage. Mean block depths of 666 ft in the Penn grid were reduced to 383 ft in the adapted grid, to 328 ft (south) and 393ft (north) in the unplanned expansion grid, and to 422 ft (south) and 534 ft (north) in the planned expansion grid. In the expansion grid, tertiary streets and rowhouse dimensions and heights were integrated with quaternary streets (pedestrian alleys), permitting high levels of housing density and diversity.

In the 1930s and 1940s, multiple five-year Soviet plans for national industrialization transformed Ukraine’s capital Kyiv (Russian Kiev) into a dramatic industrial metropolis. By 1960, Kyiv was a core industrial city with renovated prerevolutionary factories and massive new industrial enterprises. Ukraine’s 1991 independence threatened industrial complexes with demolition for retail, residential, and office uses. We examine Kyiv’s Soviet industrial legacy as prescribed in master plans of 1936 and 1947, and successive five-year plans. We profile five significant industrial complexes and their divergent fates today. We call for future transformations of Kyiv’s monumental Soviet industrial enterprises with enhanced awareness of heritage value.

Around the world, different shrinking cities face shared challenges of population loss, housing abandonment, and proliferation of vacant land. These parallel shrinking cities are a compelling and p...

Unlike shrinking cities in Western countries enduring prolonged disinvestment due to market liberalism, some of their counterparts in Northeast China are undergoing drastic redevelopment under state capitalism. However, the challenges and effects of implementing such redevelopment in shrinking cities remain to be seen. This study examined a specific state-led shantytown (quasi-formal settlement) redevelopment policy entitled "Regulation Methods on Shantytown Redevelopment in State-Owned Forestry Areas" that was designed and implemented in state-owned forestry areas beginning in 2010 to construct affordable housing and compensate local residents adversely impacted by the logging ban initiated in 2000. The study analyzed the implementation of this policy in Yichun, a shrinking forestry city in China's rust belt (Northeast China). The implementation of this policy differs from China's typical privately funded market-led redevelopment in other areas, in terms of combining the rigorous implementation of central government's policy and funding in tandem with the discretionary actions of the local state-owned forestry bureau. Although the Regulation Methods policy has improved the living conditions of participating families', it has been only partially implemented and is facing three major challenges: the unstable partnership between different tiers of government, social resistance from grassroots, and overdraft of local credibility and capability. This study concluded that the Yichun case represents a case of problematic state-led redevelopment (analogous in some ways to US postwar urban renewal) where state planning power does not adequately address public needs, particularly household socioeconomic considerations and thus will not save shrinking cities from population decline.

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In 2005, Youngstown (OH) released a widely publicized comprehensive plan, the Youngstown 2010 Citywide Plan. This plan emphasized "smart shrinkage," reflecting the city's downsized built environment and reduced population. In 2013 the city released the Youngstown Redevelopment Code, which was zoning intended to implement the comprehensive plan. In this study we measure whether the comprehensive plan conformed with the Youngstown Redevelopment Code by comparing land use designations on a parcel-by-parcel basis between the comprehensive plan, the pre-2013 code, and the Youngstown Redevelopment Code. To better understand the causality of conformance, we conducted semistructured interviews with framers of the comprehensive plan and the Youngstown Redevelopment Code documents. We find weak conformance between the comprehensive plan and the Youngstown Redevelopment Code; most of the comprehensive plan's downsizing recommendations were unimplemented. There was close conformance between the pre-2013 code and the Youngstown Redevelopment Code, and most of the differences between them reflected the comprehensive plan's recommendations. Informants attribute the weak conformance between the comprehensive plan and the Youngstown Redevelopment Code to many of the former's ideas not being legally defensible. Changing political regimes, shifts in public opinion, and the driving need for economic investment were also cited as contributors to this weak conformance. Takeaway for practice: Our findings indicate that implementing smart shrinkage land use recommendations in shrinking cities is likely to be challenging because legislators may resist codification of reduced populations and lessened economic capacity. Translating comprehensive plan ideas into zoning regulations may be subject to political, social, economic, and legal forces that limit plan enactment. These findings may apply to all cases where comprehensive plans require translation into zoning regulations for implementation. Local government officials and planners should consider these constraints on plan implementation through zoning when they are framing comprehensive plan strategies.

Shrinking cities confront the urban designer with a variety of challenges. Chief among them is the novel physical condition of the shrinking city, a condition in which vacant parcels and abandoned ...

During the mid-to-late 20th century, economic and social forces caused population decline in the deindustrializing, “shrinking” cities of many developed nations, particularly in the United States, northern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Urban designers struggled with varying degrees of success to confront problematic conditions like housing abandonment, vacant land, and disused factories. Germany, with abundant state funding and a design-oriented culture, achieved the greatest success in instituting comprehensive design strategies for its shrinking cities. Today, shrinking cities are growing in number as demographic decline resulting from income growth drives population loss in northern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as in Japan, China, Korea, Singapore, and Mediterranean Europe. Nascent urban design strategies include compact city strategies in Japan and state-led housing consolidation in China. As demographic decline spreads elsewhere in an increasingly shrinking world, novel urban design strategies will be required for an ever more diverse range of urban built environments.

This paper examines the retrofitting and redevelopment of suburban office parks, and in particular, the planning, design, and policy issues and challenges associated with this redevelopment. Recent literature indicates a shift of suburban business development in favor of increasingly competitive central cities, a dilemma for planners charged with revitalizing aging suburban business parks. To understand the nature and causality of suburban office park retrofitting and redevelopment, we conducted 13 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with planners, developers, and officials in the inner Boston metropolitan region. Interviews indicated increasing obsolescence, with widespread redevelopment as a coping strategy. Strategies included densification, mixed uses, enhanced public spaces, and attempts to enhance transit. We examine two case studies: Northwest Park in Burlington, MA, and Needham Crossing, in Needham, MA: both are former office parks redeveloped as mixed-use developments. Our research clarifies the nature and types of physical redevelopment, as well as the specific motivations behind redevelopment as a planning strategy for enhancing the viability of aging suburban office developments.