Mayor Jay Williams says that about ten years ago, they started holding community meetings to figure out how to make Youngstown run better for its smaller population. (Photo courtesy of Youngstown 2010)
Folks in lots of rust-belt cities
are used to hearing about the declining
population. Over the past thirty years,
people have been moving away from
cities such as Cleveland, Detroit,
and Indianapolis. Julie Grant visited
one city that’s embracing its newfound
smallness – and trying to un-build some
of its neighborhoods:
Transcript
Folks in lots of rust-belt cities
are used to hearing about the declining
population. Over the past thirty years,
people have been moving away from
cities such as Cleveland, Detroit,
and Indianapolis. Julie Grant visited
one city that’s embracing its newfound
smallness – and trying to un-build some
of its neighborhoods:
For decades, Youngstown, Ohio has been a city looking to its past. It was booming in the 1950s. The steel industry brought good paying, reliable jobs. City leaders back then planned for the population to blossom above 200,000.
It never got there. The steel mills closed, and people left. Youngstown lost a lot of people.
Mayor Jay Williams says that about ten years ago, they started holding community meetings. They wanted to figure out how to make the city run better for the 80,000 people who are still here.
“While it was an acknowledgement of the fact that we were going to be a smaller city, it also was an understanding that smaller didn’t have to be inferior. And that started a series of things that led us to where we are today.”
Now they are in the process of demolishing 2,000 abandoned homes and other buildings. They actually want the people to leave some areas – so the city doesn’t have to spend money on things like power, utilities and snow plows on those streets.
Mayor Williams says, in some neighborhoods, there are entire blocks that are abandoned, except for one or two houses.
“So from that standpoint, we do have a moral, and an ethical and legal obligation as a city to provide certain services. But what we’re trying to do is balance that with the fact that sometimes it doesn’t make economical or business sense.”
A lot of the times those holdouts are older folks, who don’t want to move – and might not accept that the city doesn’t plan to return to its former glory. The new leaders want to embrace the city’s new small-ness – and improve the quality.
Thing is, most of the leaders in Youngstown today are – young. The mayor is 37, the Congressman is 36, and Community Organizer Phil Kidd just turned 30. Kidd says his generation doesn’t really remember those glory days of the steel mills.
“So we don’t remember how things used to be. We’re not bitter about what happened. We are here by choice in Youngstown as young people. And when you bring that to the table, there’s a different type of lens in which you look at Youngstown, I think.”
Kidd says his generation can see that the infrastructure needs to be the right size for the people who live here now.
He says making the necessary changes will open up all kinds of new opportunities for Youngstown.
“And we look at it as almost a blank canvas, in a way, to really be progressive about being as kind of new urban pioneers, in a certain regard. But with respect for the history for this community.”
And that new vision is inadvertently attracting some young people back to the city.
Maggie Pence grew up in Youngstown, and like a lot of people, moved away after college. She needed a job. And some hope for a bright future.
“When I left, I thought, ‘this is just, nothing’s ever going to change.’ It’s always going to be lamenting the steel mills, waiting for the next big savior. It was the waiting, just waiting, to see what was going to happen.”
Today, Pence is swinging her 11-month old daughter at a park just north of downtown Youngstown. She and her husband are renovating what was a boarded up, foreclosed house nearby.
Pence largely credits city leaders for her decision. When she saw their plan, called Youngstown 2010, she decided it was time to move her family back from Brooklyn, New York, to Youngstown.
“Yeah, I mean, seeing 2010 and seeing what they were doing and having make sense to me made me realize that you could come home again, kind-of. I mean, okay, there’s a future.”
The city isn’t sure exactly what it’s going to do with all the new open space – once all the abandoned houses are demolished. Some people are planting trees and neighborhood gardens. Community leaders say the people who live here will have to decide what they want the new city to look like.
A lot of shrinking cities in the Rust Belt will have to figure that out. Sooner or later, shrinking tax bases won’t support all those barely used streets, sidewalks and water lines.
For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.
