Shrinking gracefully : looking for effective planning and design approaches for small town America

The term "shrinking" is often considered a death sentence for Small Town America. Public officials, planners and residents often try to "solve" the condition of shrinking, applying the same tool kit used for growth, with little success. A widespread assumption is that shrinking is the opposite of growth and synonymous with decline, and therefore common practice in planning and design practice has been to try and reverse the trend of population loss, often with last-ditch efforts such as free land offers, problematic industrial recruitment or unrealistic visioning exercises. If growth, even in its most destructive forms, can be made smart, can shrinking be made graceful, and if so what approach is needed to achieve it? This thesis argues that shrinking is not the opposite of growth but rather requires a much more complex and nuanced understanding, and that the condition of shrinking does not have to be a terminal diagnosis for a small town. Those communities that identify, adapt, and reuse existing human and physical assets can in fact shrink gracefully, especially given that shrinking is seldom a rapid process, but rather one that plays out over generations, providing the luxury of time to be purposeful about the planning and design process.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Fugate, Jeffrey N

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Susan C. Silberberg-Robinson.

• Urban Studies and Planning.
• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39846

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39846