In 1960s America there was a “white flight” to the suburbs, which provoked a deterioration of city centers. In the ‘70s and ‘80s the death of heavy industry emptied once proud cities like Manchester and Glasgow. Social and economic change has been wreaking chaos with cities for a long time, but each instance was usually thought of as an isolated event – or at least a regional disease. That’s no longer true. As birthrates in more and more countries decline, shrinking-city syndrome is becoming a worldwide crisis.
Aging countries are getting hit the worst. In Russia a combination of very low birthrates, decreased life expectancy and the collapse of the communist era is affecting the country badly. Seven major Russian cities were shrinking in 1990; by 2000 the number had soared to 93. In Japan, hundreds of small and midsize cities are thinning out. Even in China, the low birthrate means that coastal megacities like Shanghai are growing at the expense of dozens of less successful metropolises. Today, while hundreds of millions of Asians and Africans are just starting to move to cities, one quarter of the world’s centers are declining in population – twice the number a decade ago.
Wouldn’t less-crowded cities be a good thing? Definitely not, according to “Shrinking Cities”, a new exhibit in Berlin that compares city shrinkage across the world. In places like Detroit and Liverpool, shuttered stores and abandoned houses have led to increased violence. A 50 percent drop in the birthrate has killed entire sectors of the economy in cities that used to be located in East Germany.
(Adaptado de Newsweek, September 27, 2004.)
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