How America's shrinking cities can 'rightsize'

As strip malls continue to decline, some urban planning and real estate experts are advocating to turn the spaces into mixed-use developments with both residential and commercial spaces. This redevelopment is an opportunity to revitalize and enrich a community by creating a village-like setting, like Woburn Village, with its 175,000 square-feet of commercial space and 350 housing units.

Wales’ One Planet Development Policy allows people to live a more sustainable lifestyle by using only the resources on the land where they reside. For one family, they get their electricity from their own solar array, heat from firewood, and food from their gardens and livestock. Each year, they must prove that they are using only their “global fair share” of resources. So far, 46 farms have signed on to the program and the lessons learned from the experiment are helping to inform the government’s actions on other policies like housing.

After the residential real estate market collapsed a decade ago, a developer that had been revitalizing an impoverished Jacksonville neighborhood with single-family homes pivoted to a broader approach to reducing crime and blight. Progress has been difficult, and violence in the neighborhood remains high. But, by building larger complexes and offering an array of services and interventions, Northwest Jacksonville Community Development Corporation is achieving slow but steady social change.

Civic leaders in the U.S. struggle to effectively help their distressed neighborhoods. East Lake, Atlanta, created a replicable model that mixes residents of differing socio-economic status, and focuses on education and health in the area.

Copenhagen, Hoboken, and other cities have implemented "sponge city" approaches that combine nature-based infrastructure like absorbent parks and green spaces with traditional engineering to reduce flooding while creating popular public amenities.

Community-led mapping and risk assessments by Pamoja Trust enabled informal settlement residents in Nairobi to document accurate data showing more accurate counts of people at flood risk (nearly 12 times more than official estimates identified). This gave communities evidence to advocate for inclusion in government recovery programs and influence official regeneration planning.

Mandatory inclusionary zoning policies have increased affordable housing stock in many cities across the U.S. In most cases, the policies require developers build 5-10% of new units with rents attainable for low- to median-income people, or pay a fee, which is dedicated to other affordable housing projects. In Redmond, Washington, such policy has resulted in a 42% growth of housing stock since 2010.

As a part of the city’s carbon neutrality plan, Ann Arbor Michigan’s Community Action Network is decarbonizing homes in one of its most socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhoods by repairing, retrofitting, installing solar panels, and asking the community members for their input.

After a tornado devastated Greensburg, Kansas, the town decided to use the disaster as an opportunity to become more environmentally sustainable. For example, they built a new school out of recycled wood and it was powered with geothermal heat. While the maintenance of these sustainable features can be tricky, this shift to a greener town can be a case study for others looking to make the transition.

The Knox County Land Reutilization Corporation, also known as the Knox County land bank, takes abandoned properties that are vacant and tax delinquent, revitalizes them, and then sells them to new owners. This eliminates blight around the county and encourages economic development. The Land Bank President estimates that for every $1 the land bank spends, they generate $33.82 in redevelopment. Operating in earnest since the fall of 2018, the land bank has brought $3.5 million in reinvestment into the county. They are now looking to acquire even more buildings and financially support individual homeowners.