Rightsizing as Spatial Austerity in the American Rust Belt

Jason Hackworth
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Jason Hackworth: Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada

Environment and Planning A, 2015, vol. 47, issue 4, 766-782

Abstract: ‘Rightsizing’ is a planning paradigm currently being applied to shrinking cities in North America and Europe. The central idea is to avoid the trap of growth-oriented planning by restructuring the urban landscape around mixed-income, mixed-use clusters. By replacing the current sprawling inefficiency, proponents argue, environmental, equity, and infrastructure efficiency goals can be achieved. Some have worried however, that rightsizing is merely a newly packaged version of urban renewal. I argue that both framings are misplaced. Through a careful consideration of rightsizing plans in five US cities—Detroit, Flint, Rochester, Saginaw, and Youngstown—I argue that austerity urbanism is the more apt way to characterize actualized versions of the idea. Actualized rightsizing lacks the utopian modernism and Keynesian interventionism of urban renewal, and the progressive equity-oriented environmentalism idealized by its proponents.

Keywords: rightsizing; austerity urbanism; neoliberalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:47:y:2015:i:4:p:766-782

DOI: 10.1068/a140327p

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