Shrinking Cities: Art Dealing With Vanishing Populations

For more than 150 years of industrialization there has been a constant growth of cities, turning some of them into massive sprawls. But only until recently there has been some awareness, that due to economical decline and various other factors, cities indeed tend to decrease, to shrink again - and nearly vanish. Globally speaking, the population of every forth city is more or less diminishing, some cities like for example Manchester even lost already half of their population over just two decades. Do we have a crisis, do we have to worry about that? Okay, maybe you didn’t even notice stores closing in your area… In 2004 the interdisciplinary German art project Shrinking Cities tried to depict this phenomenon with an exhibition that focused on four international cities with major shrinking populations. Now there comes a follow-up presenting action concepts…

Starting this Sunday, the new exhibition is coming now to the Akiba Square in Akihabara, Tokyo. Shrinking Cities will be shown in connection with the Japanese Fiber City project from Hidetoshi Ohno of the University of Tokyo that envisions how Tokyo might look like in 2050 (more info below). PingMag talked to Philipp Oswalt from Berlin, the German founder of the Shrinking Cities project about the global problem of diminishing cities and our awareness of that.

Written by Verena

Shrinking Cities founder Philipp Oswalt in Berlin

Hello Philipp! First, the term Shrinking Cities sounds quite interesting!? Shrinking resembles the economical term of downsizing which is used to gloss over the fact that in a company many people will loose their job due to restructuring measures. Why did you choose it?

To a greater extend, our society is moulded by the idea of constant growth. That’s why I was looking for a term that was neither colouring nor dramatizing. Many people rejected this term as being too negative. But why? How would you call it if a city looses half of its entire population? On a political level, this seems to be tabooed, too. Even the wording goes so far as not to name it, like for example a demolition site is rather called area with higher level of urban restructuring. Whereas subculture regards shrinking as positive, using it for stylization: like in Hip Hop culture lyrics tend to stress the ghetto origin and that a person has made his way out of this tough as well as declining hood. That’s really absurd.

Tell me more about the Shrinking Cities project, please. What was the initial idea?

After the German reunion, by the end of the 90s there was this initial situation in Eastern Germany of an economical growth falling short of expectations. The result was an unemployment rate of 20 percent and moreover an enormous vacancy of 1 million flats. A fact that has been concealed from the beginning.

Since 2000 the situation got worse and the federal government developed a demolition plan. That’s why I began engaging with the issue, as the demolition brings along a significant cultural change that definitely needs a fundamental inspection about its cultural relevance as well as the possibility to intervene culturally. I wanted to ignite a public debate about the situation. Moreover, this is a global development that has been appearing for decades. With our project we wanted to see how other countries and cultures deal with it, either in a good or bad way. In the first stage we put the focus on four areas: Ivanovo in Russia, Manchester and Liverpool in Great Britain, Detroit in the States, and Halle/Leipzig in Germany.

In the beginning, Shrinking Cities was intended for the German pavilion at the 2002 Architectural Biennale in Venice. But when the jury didn’t choose it, the German Federal Cultural Foundation took over and financed it.

Declining downtown area of Detroit: from the center (black) in 1950 to its thinning and therefore the growing suburbs (grey) in 2000. (credit: Shrinking Cities)

“Planned destruction and failed planning”: after chaotic destruction and rebulding measures, the structure of the Holme district in Manchester/Liverpool with its former Victorian houses seems to be totally shredded (grey). (credit: Shrinking Cities)

In 2004 Shrinking Cities presented a first global artistic survey with the current status quo, now you have the follow-up with concrete concepts of action. Please explain that a bit…

Over the last 150 years we used the instruments of town planing, like how to deal with economical and urban development growth. Now, in contrary to that we can’t come up anymore with consistent measures of action. Because a lot of what is influencing a city lies beyond the usual disciplines of town planing. Shrinking as such stems from the economical as well as technological developments and is certainly not intended. As part of the reflexive modernity, there is a discourse about shrinking going on among sociologists like Anthony Giddens or Ulrich Beck. They are stressing the circumstance that today we have to deal increasingly with the side effects of modernism that neither are monocausal nor monolinear. Meaning, different determining factors require actions on very different levels:

Either locally, like for example the Berlin-based project Neuland that wants to open property no longer in use for a public competition. Or better, in the context of Shrinking Cities there was a project called Claiming Land that wanted to give away abandoned property for free. This could be an example for a national project as well, as it deals with the important matter of proprietary rights.

I liked the more radical approach of the German art project ‘Sonderwohlfahrtszone’ (special welfare area) that was derived from the participatory practice realized first in the Brazilian capital of Porto Alegre: because the restructuring of abandoned areas is such a problem, why don’t we let the citizens decide for themselves how to spend the public funding on any financial support in their home town - without any restrictions? That’s absurd, but still it’s a fact that any municipal support usually doesn’t have much impact other than being merely symbolic intervention.

Is Shrinking Cities one of the first projects about urban decline that brings together architects, filmmakers, journalists, artists and cultural and social scientists for collaborative works?

No, but still this kind of interdisciplinary work might be not so common, especially when it comes to the exhibition place that tries to put it in either an art or a documenting context. Shrinking Cities features works that tackle the matter from very different sides: from a dry scientific approach that cares about the hard facts with a survey up to works that observe very specific situations with an artistic approach.

Can vacancy be a hotbed for new artistic tendencies and developments?

Well, yes!

Over the recent years in Germany there had been a tendency to let artists use abandoned shops as temporary art spaces. I consider this kind of critical as it creates a simulated urbanity that happens for a couple of weeks and then vaporises and doesn’t have any lasting effect at all. Though this is important and stimulating, but you can’t expect artists solving the overall problems. For example the land art works of Robert Smithson tried to restate ideas about space and that comes very close to what we wanted to convey with Shrinking Cities.

Atlas of Shrinking Cities book cover

Besides the exhibition, one of your related outputs has been the Atlas of Shrinking Cities. I was amazed by the hundreds of info graphics that had a freshly designed look and still dealt seriously with the matter…

This was made in collaboration with two Swiss designers. We tried to contradict all these relative abstract info graphics with the actual case study of the cities. This is about storytelling as well, for example having a chart about the AIDS rate opposite to the case study of the real location.

Thank you, Philipp! I hope your insights will rise more awareness for this issue amongst our alert PingMag readers. Looking forward to see you at the exhibition!

Reminder: Shrinking Cities and Fiber City exhibition from January 28th to February 18th at Akihabara’s Akiba Square, Akihabara UDX, 2F. Free entry. Have a look at the program for the talk show schedule.

15 Comments

1. I recommend the dvd/cd sets of Shrinking Cities documents (written and visual) available on the website…. they’re beautiful on academic, design and pure interest levels…. wonderful. The ordering page is in German, but I just sent them a mail and the guys there sorted it out for me…so great.

   Posted by: chris berthelsen on January 27th, 2007 at 5:17 pm

2. Well, I was born in city, such as these, we got a lot of kinda buildings

   http://gotcox.livejournal.com/9540.html
   http://forum.reborn.ru/showthread.php?t=514427
   http://forum.reborn.ru/showthread.php?t=472561

   ps. Sorry for my english)

   Posted by: gotcox on January 27th, 2007 at 10:30 pm

3. My report on the original Shrinking Cities exhibition in Berlin is here:

   http://imomus.livejournal.com/57298.html

   Please cover the Fiber City show for those of us who can’t see it!

   Posted by: Momus on January 28th, 2007 at 12:40 am

4. Excellent feature. I would like to share this link:

   http://www.culturesfrance.com/afrique/projetsphares/bamakoVI/pdf/tillim.pdf

   Its a Guy Tillim documentary on Johannesburg’s city center. It won an award from Leica some time ago.

   Let me know if you need African collaboration!

   Posted by: John Freeman on January 28th, 2007 at 1:17 am

5. Oswalt and Strange stuff . great things .i wished i had such a view in my home!: http://www.pingmag.jp/images/article/shrinking16.jpg

   Posted by: A1one on January 28th, 2007 at 1:56 pm

6. [...] Metropolitan Detroit area is now in the middle of a “perfect storm” with <a href=”http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007701250332″>foreclosures skyrocketing</a>.  The art installation <a href=”http://www.pingmag.jp/2007/01/26/shrinking-cities/”>Shrinking Cities</a> points to the role of globalization in this process.  Those of us interested in racial politics have focused perhaps way too much on the US context, not wrestling with the interconnectedness of places like Tresor and Detroit–Tresor wouldn’t exist without <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno_music”>Detroit Techno</a>.  What happened in Detroit and other industrial cities in the Midwest accelerated because of the presence of black folk who were able to gain political power.  But given that Manchester went through the same process, what happened in Detroit has to be larger than racism.  I’ve been talking to a photographer at Hopkins about creating a joint class that would combine photography with urban politics.  Baltimore is probably the best place on the East Coast to try to tie some of these themes together somehow. [...]

   Posted by: Shrinking Cities at Dr. Lester K. Spence on January 28th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

7. Unforunately I have not been in any of the expamles you cited… But I have been to Saint Louis, in USA, and it seems it is another shrinking city. I think people is not even moving to suburbs, just leaving for other cities.

   Posted by: xmanoel on January 31st, 2007 at 9:32 pm

8. [...] As cities grey and empty, as schools close for want of children, and old folks are farmed out to the private sector for fear they’ll soon be too many and too expensive… then it becomes possible to photograph emptying cities. [...]

   Posted by: D’log :: blogging non-stop since 2000 » Emptying cities on February 2nd, 2007 at 3:36 am

9. [...] PING magazine have aan article on a touring exhibition…  For more than 150 years of industrialization there has been a constant growth of cities, turning some of them into massive sprawls. But only until recently there has been some awareness, that due to economical decline and various other factors, cities indeed tend to decrease, to shrink again - and nearly vanish. Globally speaking, the population of every forth city is more or less diminishing, some cities like for example Manchester even lost already half of their population over just two decades. Do we have a crisis, do we have to worry about that? Okay, maybe you didn’t even notice stores closing in your area… In 2004 the interdisciplinary German art project Shrinking Cities tried to depict this phenomenon with an exhibition that focused on four international cities with major shrinking populations. Now there comes a follow-up presenting action concepts…Article continues after the jump link [...]

   Posted by: FADblog » Blog Archive » Shrinking Cities: Art Dealing With Vanishing Populations on February 5th, 2007 at 10:59 pm

10. [...] I went to see Ectomorph at MOCAD last night. They performed at the Shrinking Cities exhibit. Part of the show is also at Cranbrook. Peep this interview with D Records DJ/Producer, Rex Sepulveda. Permalink [...]

    Posted by: » Shrinking Cities::Ectomorph::Rexxx on February 11th, 2007 at 10:29 am

11. I kind of wish this to happen to Tokyo….

    Posted by: suzy q on February 19th, 2007 at 7:02 pm

12. [...] If these kind of quarters are badly connected to public transport then either the explosive social mixture of the seventies is still prevalent or they become the victim of the shrinking cities phenomenom (see also ping mag). Likewise east german Plattenbaubuildings in rather remote locations experienced a social devaluation. Besides the bad connection to the inner city, one reason for the devaluation is of course that these buildings are badly built. You can hear almost every word of your neighbours and you better do not practise a music instrument. [...]

    Posted by: randform » Blog Archive » architectural spaces on February 19th, 2007 at 10:11 pm

13. Hello, Your site is great. Regards, Valintino Guxxi

    Posted by: Anonymous on May 8th, 2007 at 9:02 am

14. [...] (termasuk telah dilakukan di Indonesia). Di Tokyo awal tahun ini, pamerannya diliput oleh PinkMag di sini. Pada dasarnya, menurut Oswalt, kota-kota yang menciut merupakan sebuah tantangan budaya maupun [...]

    Posted by: Shukushou Toshi, Shrinking City « A SUNNY DAY on June 28th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

15. [...] government budget that is tinted by last year’s pension scandal. We already introduced you to the Shrinking Cities exhibition that toured Tokyo and dealt with vanishing populations. One of the people working on [...]

    Posted by: Shrinking Nippon « Futures Group on November 3rd, 2008 at 2:48 pm

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