Justin B. Hollander

The bounds of smart decline: a foundational theory for planning shrinking cities

Economic decline has led to a new wave of population decline throughout the US, meaning more and more cities are shrinking. Growing interest in using smart decline principles to respond to shrinkage has been met with controversy in cities such as Detroit and Cleveland. This paper advances a foundational theory of smart decline that takes as its starting point discussions of ethics, equity, and social justice in the planning and political theory literature, but is well grounded in observations of successful smart decline practice.

Immersive Planning: A Conceptual Model for Designing Public Participation with New Technologies

Public participation is an important part of the urban planning process. However, too often the goals of this participation are not clearly articulated and, as a result, the platforms for participation created with digital technologies are often poorly designed or simply lack clarity. Immersive planning is a conceptual model with which to conceive the process of public participation that focuses on the depth and breadth of user experience. Borrowing from literature on games and virtual environments, we frame recent, technologically aided approaches to public participation within three categories of immersion: challenge-based, sensory, and imaginative. Geographic information systems, computer aided design, planning support systems, virtual environments, and digital games are all methods of obtaining user immersion in one or a combination of these categories. In this paper we provide a review of the foundational literature and influential projects in this area, and by framing them within the model of immersive planning seek to connect these efforts to provide a clearer path forward in employing new technologies for public participation.

Moving Toward a Shrinking Cities Metric: Analyzing Land Use Changes Associated with Depopulation in Flint, Michigan

Cities around the globe have experienced depopulation or population shrinkage at an acute level in the last half century. Conventional community development and planning responses have looked to reverse the process of depopulation almost universally, with little attention paid to how neighborhoods physically change when they lose population. This article presents an approach to study the physical changes of depopulating neighborhoods in a novel way. The approach considers how population decline creates different physical impacts (more or less housing abandonment, for example) across different neighborhoods. Data presented from a detailed case study of Flint, Michigan, illustrate that population decline can be more painful in some neighborhoods than in others, suggesting that this article’s proposed approach may be useful in implementing smart decline.

Commentary: Virtual Planning Second Life and the Online Studio

This article reports on the use of Second Life in three urban planning and design courses. Second Life is one of the latest in a new breed of computer games based on the simultaneous use of virtual three-dimensional space by millions of users throughout the globe. The course instructors found that while the virtual planning studio can introduce real dangers to students and technological limitations exist, Second Life provides a heretofore unprecedented tool for teaching planning.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Pilot Program

OBJECTIVE We studied the diffusion of the US Environmental Protection Agencys national brownfields pilot innovation to more than 300 local governments between 1993 through 2002 to determine why some local governments received grants very early in the process while other awardees received funding later. METHODS We did an ordinal regression analysis of the characteristics of all local government award recipients, and we conducted interviews with early-award recipients. RESULTS The first set of local government awardees had lost much of their manufacturing base, had large concentrations of economically disadvantaged minority residents, and had local capacity to compete for funding. Federal and state officials catalyzed the diffusion of the innovation by working with local governments. CONCLUSIONS The widely praised program was diffused selectively at first and then more widely later on the basis of local need, local capacity to compete, and networks of contacts among entrepreneurs and local governments. The economic, social, political, and public health impacts must be monitored and reviewed.

The city at play: Second Life and the virtual urban planning studio

This study interrogates the idea of using videogames and game‐like virtual worlds as a means to advance studio education pedagogy. Looking at a series of case studies of urban planning courses taught using Second Life, the results describe the potentials, and limits, of this emerging digital media. Key findings are that the virtual worlds provided additional benefits to student learning and engagement through fun and intellectual simulation of play. The virtual world environment allowed students to interact in a novel and unique way, improving upon traditional studio education.

Brain responses to architecture and planning: a preliminary neuro-assessment of the pedestrian experience in Boston, Massachusetts

ABSTRACT There is a revolution underway in the interface between architecture and planning. Very recent research is enabling a novel understanding of the neuroscience behind how people perceive and experience the built environment. One such work, Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment (Sussman, Ann, and Justin B. Hollander. 2015. New York: Routledge), argues for a set of testable principles for architecture and planning practice. Its overall line of investigation is that certain design characteristics of the built environment can influence brain wave production. Specifically, the interest lies in whether the presence of features suggestive of Cognitive Architecture is associated with certain brain responses. This working paper presents the results of a pilot study into this question, discusses technical issues and limitations and provides suggestions for future research avenues.

Data and Analytics for Neighborhood Development: Smart Shrinkage Decision Modeling in Baltimore, Maryland

Many older cities in the United States confront the problem of long-term decline in population and economic activity resulting in blighted conditions that make conventional revitalization initiatives unlikely to succeed. Smart shrinkage, a planning approach that emphasizes alternative land uses while preserving quality of life, offers a way for cities to remain desirable places to live and work. However, there is little research on empirical methods to support planning decisions consistent with smart shrinkage. We present results from two studies with planners from the City of Baltimore that provide novel insights regarding ways in which planners can perform vacant property redevelopment using methods from data analytics and decision science. This study provides a foundation for practitioners to make better use of large volumes of data describing blighted communities, accommodate diverse attitudes about policy and planning responses to blight, and judiciously apply advanced methods in data analysis and decision models.

Right-sizing shrinking cities: a landscape and design strategy for abandoned properties

Abstract Much popular and academic attention is paid to population deconcentration and economic decline in so-called shrinking cities. In this paper we react upon several theories of urban decline with a novel analysis of abandoned properties in the United States, using foreclosure-driven residential vacancies (FDRVs) as a proxy for abandoned properties. We empirically examine the amount and type of abandoned land in some of the cities hardest hit by the mortgage crisis, and present a relevant landscape and design strategy to show that landscape architects are well positioned to redesign this newly available land. To help develop a systematic set of stages and actions for right-sizing initiatives, we catalogue several examples of current initiatives to address abandonment, paying attention to roadblocks inherent to this landscape and design strategy. This strategy presents a useful model with which designers can tackle the difficult and controversial issue of right-sizing.

Changing Urban Form in a Shrinking City

This paper uses building footprint data in a shrinking city, Baltimore, MD, in 1972 and 2010 to achieve two primary research objectives. The first is to understand the historical patterns of housing construction and demolition in selected row house neighborhoods in Baltimore between 1972 and 2010. The second is to understand changes in housing footprints, and associations between these changes and physical and socio-economic characteristics in selected neighborhoods. We find that housing losses and associated changes in building footprints have shown substantial variation across our study area and exhibit clustering within our study area. Moreover, while housing loss is strongly associated with certain physical factors, there is a weaker association between housing loss and changes in certain socio-economic neighborhood characteristics between 1970 and 2010. Our research findings provide support for targeted, evidence-based neighborhood-based strategies that encompass traditional as well as novel approaches to vacant land management.