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Shrinking

Started by Will Wilkinson · 1 year ago

Most of this week’s NYT Magazine cover piece on Europe’s fertility decline is old news to me,  thanks to my household demographics specialist, but I did find the bits at the end about the Bahaus Institute’s efforts to shrink Dessau, Germany pretty fascinating.

The plan, therefore, calls for demolishing underused sections of the city and weaving [...] ... Continue reading »

4 comments

  • DWAnderson

    1 year ago

    This same problem is faced is by St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans, almost all of which was flooded in connection with Katrina. When I was there in the Spring, a saw miles of tract homes that were only spottily inhabited. I was struck by the thought, that everyone might be better off if the whole thing were razed and people could start from scratch rather than being wedding to property divisions that no longer made sense.
    reply
  • jfcote87

    1 year ago

    Youngstown, OH is trying to do the same thing. http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?arti...

    Part of the town's justification is that shrinking the city also reduces the cost of providing public services (road maintenance, garbage, sewage, police and fire protection of abandoned buildings, etc.).

    I can see a scenario where the municipality could offer the property owner a "choice" of either a buyout or higher fees/taxes.
    reply
  • Robert Light

    1 year ago

    To expand on my previous comments re. KH's article, I think neither of you are making the precise distinction between nature and culture (convention), the former being necessary for understanding the latter. For instance, I can say I don't wear a powdered wig and stockings like George Washington, but I adhere to his view of natural right. Or take the phenomenon of men wearing earrings. While the initial turn to earrings some years ago appeared to coincide with a certain effeminacy of contemporary men, which it does to a large extent, there nevertheless are distinct sex roles evident in the now-established conventions for wearing earrings. For example, you rarely if ever see men wearing hoop earrings; there is generally a man's way to wear earrings and a woman's way. In other words, culture tends to follow nature, even though absurdities abound, toward both license and oppression, which are to be expected since culture as such is merely a manifestation of man's freedom. More generally, this topic reflects what Aristotle means when he says in the Ethics that natural right has the same power everywhere but is everywhere changeable. Nature is completed by freedom, but nevertheless guides freedom. KH and you are right to the extent that some conservatives (paleocons, by and large) adhere to cultural stasis, but you're perhaps insufficiently aware of the extent to which your embrace of cultural change is merely the obverse of that conservatism.
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  • Kai

    1 year ago

    Take a look (if you haven't already) at the website www.shrinkingcities.com
    There now is a whole sub-genre of architecture and city planning working on concepts of "rueckbauen" (~de-building) not just living and commercial space, but also infrastructure such as roads etc.
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