麻豆淫院

When Brent Ryan started doing academic research on Detroit, in the 1990s, he was immediately taken aback by the city鈥檚 plight: derelict commercial buildings, burnt-out homes and whole neighborhoods being abandoned. 

鈥淚 was really struck by the amount of physical decay I saw there,鈥� says Ryan, the Linde Career Development Assistant Professor of Urban Design and Public Policy in MIT鈥檚 Department of Urban Studies and Planning. 鈥淚t was incredibly troubling to see a huge city laid to waste like that, and we didn鈥檛 seem as a society to be doing anything about it.鈥�

And that was during a decade when the economy and auto industry were rolling along nicely. Then, between 2000 and 2010, Detroit鈥檚 population fell a further 25 percent to 714,000, the lowest it has been in a century; Time magazine has dubbed Detroit the 鈥渧anishing city.鈥� 

It is easy to write off such places as basket cases belonging to a bygone industrial era 鈥� too easy, in the view of Ryan. 鈥淲e can鈥檛 totally reverse the problems afflicting these places, but there is nothing lost by trying to improve matters with positive programs, rather than just demolishing more homes,鈥� he says.

In this vein, Ryan has written a new book, Design After Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities, published this spring by the University of Pennsylvania Press, that is a call to action for reviving troubled metropolises through a combination of better urban planning and innovative architecture. In his book, which uses Detroit and Philadelphia as case studies, Ryan argues against the architectural 鈥渟uburbanization鈥� of cities, maintaining that bolder, more distinctive civic projects can enhance the comparative advantages of cities as dense, diverse, lively places to live.  

鈥淣ot every person in a shrinking city can relocate to a place with a better economy,鈥� Ryan writes, adding that local officials must therefore find new ways to make 鈥渢he lives of their constituents better.鈥� 

If you design it well, they will come

Ryan, who got his undergraduate degree from Yale University, received a master鈥檚 in architecture from Columbia University and a PhD in urban planning from MIT. Accordingly, he thinks innovative architecture isn鈥檛 just decorative, but integral to urban renewal. 

鈥淕ood design provides a project with visibility,鈥� Ryan says. That makes architects more eager to work on similar projects, and helps raise local backing. Without good design, Ryan says, 鈥渋t鈥檚 harder for Detroiters to see a development in their city that leads the way forward.鈥� Conversely, Ryan says, 鈥渁 sad thing in cities is that a lot of the leading-edge architectural projects are always either museums or buildings with million-dollar condominiums. We need to reunite a social agenda with a progressive design agenda.鈥�

Design After Decline chronicles, in part, the design legacy that hinders urban planning today. In the first postwar decades, urban planning was far more ambitious 鈥� and better funded 鈥� than it is today, but stylistically, it became unhappily associated with 1960s-era modernism in the form of vast, inhospitable public-housing blocks, such as the infamous Pruitt-Igoe houses in St. Louis that were quickly demolished. 

鈥淲e鈥檝e generated a caricature of modernism that it was only brutal and inhumane public housing, got dynamited, and so much the better,鈥� Ryan says. 鈥淧ruitt-Igoe has become shorthand for the follies of high modernism.鈥�

But not all modernism was like that, Ryan argues in the book; in the 1970s, more subtle, livable forms of modernist public housing had evolved, some of which were implemented in Europe. It was too late in the United States, he says: Public support for urban renewal waned before better architecture could give urban projects a better reputation. 

In reaction to this, as Ryan chronicles, from the 1970s onward urban projects occurred on a small scale, with undistinguished housing that represented the 鈥渟uburbanization鈥� of cities. In Detroit, this left lower-income people living in heavily car-dependent neighborhoods that were less appealing versions of suburbs, rather than in denser, more convenient areas that constituted a clear alternative to suburban life. In North Philadelphia, as Ryan details, small-scale redevelopment brought stability to some neighborhoods, but still demonstrated a 鈥渇ear of experimentation鈥� that limited its impact.

By contrast, innovative design has helped revive places such as Medell铆n, Colombia, which rebuilt public transit, schools, libraries and commercial districts while placing average-income residents in architecturally lively buildings.  In turn, Ryan notes, Medell铆n鈥檚 renewal was partly based on innovative 1990s projects in Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro.  

Pursuing patchwork urbanism

Colleagues say Ryan鈥檚 work helps bring a new perspective to the problems of urban renewal. Ryan鈥檚 writings are 鈥渁bsolutely essential as regards shrinking cities; he is trying to imagine how they might be physically transformed,鈥� says Robert Beauregard, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University. 鈥淢uch attention is devoted in these cities to erasing the signs of abandonment. Little attention is paid to how these places, having lost their 鈥榰rban鈥� form, can be redeveloped so as to avoid simply becoming 鈥榮uburban.鈥欌��

Of course, redevelopment will be particularly hard for American cities in tight fiscal times. Barcelona鈥檚 revival was based in part on funding for the 1992 Olympics; Detroit will never have that advantage. Still, Ryan argues that cities should pursue 鈥減alliative planning,鈥� in which some interventions are better than none. The resulting 鈥減atchwork urbanism,鈥� Ryan notes, by enhancing certain neighborhoods, may provide momentum for further change. 

Such interventions are 鈥済oing to have to happen at the city level, because there鈥檚 no national urban policy anymore driving [design innovation],鈥� Ryan says. 鈥淏ut in America you always have the chance for innovation anywhere. All you need is one innovative politician to say, 鈥楾his is the way I want to do things.鈥欌��

The city of Buffalo, he notes, currently receives $18 million a year in federal money for housing. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not nothing,鈥� Ryan says. 鈥淏ut is money in cities being spent well or poorly? I鈥檓 not seeing a lot of innovative projects coming out of our cities. Let鈥檚 take the money we have, spend it well and use that as an argument to get more.鈥�

This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.