Legacy Cities Research Articles

Economic Development in Legacy Cities: Current and Emerging Challenges and Opportunities

Economic Development in Legacy Cities: Current and Emerging Challenges and Opportunities

Historic Preservation in Legacy City Comprehensive Plans

This paper focuses on the ways in which recent comprehensive planning efforts in legacy cities address issues of historic preservation. Using 15 comprehensive plans as archival sources, we conduct textual analysis to explore how each of the plans incorporates historic preservation. The findings confirm existing research that suggests historic preservation has grown into an integral component of city planning efforts. The research offers insights into the current relationship between preservation and city planning, particularly within the context of legacy cities, and suggests that, despite recent practice, preservation remains a more palatable strategy than widespread demolition.

People-Place Dilemma: The Challenge for Anchor Networks in Legacy Cities

Anchor movements rest on the premise that people- and place-based initiatives can be mutually reinforcing. The community development movement, however, has been haunted for years by the people-place dilemma – the idea that efforts to help people harm efforts to uplift places and vice versa. This article examines the people-place dilemma through a case study of the St. Louis Anchor Action Network (STLAAN), a collaboration of 16 anchor institutions. St. Louis is a classic legacy city that once enjoyed rapid growth but is now characterized by falling population size and high poverty. The heart of the people-place dilemma in legacy cities is that efforts to help people in disinvested communities may enable them to move somewhere else, leaving behind poorer communities. We document longstanding trends that have drained STLAAN’s focus geography of people and resources, as well as more recent growth of an “eds and meds” economy that presents an opportunity to address decades of disinvestment and decline. We examine STLAAN’s efforts to invest in its focus geography and the people who live there, drawing lessons for anchor work, especially in legacy cities. Our research underscores the importance of data, social commitments, community engagement, and research.

VLAS: Vacant Land Assessment System for Urban Renewal and Greenspace Planning in Legacy Cities

Vacant land in shrinking cities has long been associated with high crime rates and economic decline. While some efforts have been made to repurpose vacant land for tax revenue generation and temporary environmental restoration, a comprehensive framework for city-scale assessment and reprogramming remains lacking. To address this gap, our study introduced the Vacant Land Assessment System (VLAS), a multi-scale spatial analysis and planning tool that assesses the distribution and characteristics of vacant lots using publicly available spatial data. Taking Hartford, Connecticut as a case study, we assessed and categorized the characteristics of vacant lots into four typologies: Row House, Street Corner, Commercial/Industrial, and Main Street. Responding reuse programs for those typologies were generated and one design example of vacant lot greening was also provided based on identified sustainable goals and techniques. The VLAS serves as an effective planning support tool, enabling efficient assessment, classification, and planning for urban vacancy management across city, district, neighborhood, and site scales. This multi-scale planning and design approach to repurpose vacant lots with diverse physical characteristics offers valuable insights for transforming vacant land in other shrinking legacy cities for sustainability and neighborhood revitalization.

Metals could challenge pollinator conservation in legacy cities

Metals could challenge pollinator conservation in legacy cities

Book Review: Supporting Shrinkage: Better Planning and Decision-Making for Legacy Cities by Michael P. Johnson, Justin B. Hollander, Eliza W. Kinsey, and George R. Chichirau, with assistance from Charla Burnett

Book Review: <i>Supporting Shrinkage: Better Planning and Decision-Making for Legacy Cities</i> by Michael P. Johnson, Justin B. Hollander, Eliza W. Kinsey, and George R. Chichirau, with assistance from Charla Burnett

Planning for Climate Migration in Great Lake Legacy Cities

AbstractThe possibility that climate change might make the Great Lakes region (GLR) a more attractive place for people to live has gained traction and attracted media attention. Compared with the dry Southwest, the storm‐ridden Gulf region and the sea‐level rise exposed East and West Coasts, the GLR may fare relatively favorably due to an abundance of natural resources and projected climate amenities. While the emergence and character of such migration is still uncertain, it is essential that GLR urban communities proactively prepare and plan for such a potential future. Understanding how these shifts might affect residents of GLR communities will be critical for a just and sustainable future and for avoiding exacerbating existing inequalities and climate vulnerabilities. Here we propose new scalable methodologies for inclusive engagement that enable wide‐reaching knowledge co‐creation (e.g., web‐based engagement) that can meet the emergent and diverse challenges communities will face. These methodologies have the potential to not only broaden participation and improve practitioners' understanding of different GLR communities' preferences, but also to anticipate emerging tensions and potential synergies associated with increased population pressures.

Does urban agriculture lead to gentrification?

Urban agriculture, experiencing a resurgence across the Global North, features prominently in food system sustainability and urban resilience discourse, planning, and policy. Research, however, indicates that racialized gentrification tends to accompany urban agriculture, similar to a phenomenon documented with other green space. This study used remote sensing to map home (N = 478) and community (N = 130) gardens across Detroit, an emblematic legacy city undergoing significant redevelopment. Despite being a city in which seventy-eight percent of the residents are Black, spatial regression revealed that gardens in Detroit are actually more prevalent in non-Black-neighborhoods. Community gardens predominate in neighborhoods where residents are younger, wealthier, and college-educated, while home gardens are more numerous in areas with high rates of home ownership. Modeling also indicated that gardens are in areas with limited access to fresh produce. Contrary to the literature, we did not find a correlation between the presence of gardens and potential gentrification. Gardens, however, are consistently more prevalent in neighborhoods that have stabilized after experiencing high rates of vacancy, foreclosure, and housing demolition. These results have three important implications. First, redevelopment processes in legacy cities such as Detroit, through urban agriculture and other green infrastructure, are likely to lead to garden distributions different than those found in cities with more typical development trajectories. Second, the research calls into question generalized assumptions that expanding green space inevitably leads to gentrification, necessitating deeper investigation of these dynamics in diverse urban settings. And finally, racialized narratives around gardens and redevelopment risk undermining long-standing connections between Detroit’s gardens and environmental justice.

Exposure to urban heavy metal contamination diminishes bumble bee colony growth

As a result of their industrial past, legacy cites often have elevated concentrations of soil heavy metal contamination. Metal pollution can have negative and prolonged ecosystem impacts, and bees that forage in these urban ecosystems are at risk of exposure. Legacy cities are known to support species rich bee communities, which highlights the importance of determining the impact of heavy metal contamination on wild bee health. We examined how oral exposure to concentrations of four metals found within the provisions of bees foraging within Cleveland, Ohio, USA influenced colony growth of Bombus impatiens Cresson (Hymenoptera: Apidae), a common species within legacy cities across the eastern United States. Colony weight and brood survivorship were compared among hives fed uncontaminated sucrose solution (hereafter nectar), nectar spiked with one metal (arsenic, cadmium, chromium, or lead), and nectar containing all metals, after 15 or 30 d of exposure within flight tents. Across both exposure periods, we found a significantly higher proportion of dead brood in metal exposed hives. Additionally, colonies fed all four metals had a significantly higher proportion of dead brood than those fed a single metal. Our findings illustrate that even low, environmentally relevant concentrations of metals collected by B. impatiens in legacy cities can negatively influence bee colony growth. We highlight the need to identify metal exposure routes for bees in contaminated landscapes to minimize risk and bolster conservation habitat initiative success.

Legacy regions, not legacy cities: Growth and decline in city-centered regional economies

ABSTRACT Advocates adopted the term legacy city for older former industrial central cities to shift policy discussions from their social liabilities to their economic and physical assets. In examining this concept, we place U.S. central cities within a regional context, using cluster-discriminant analysis to distinguish between groups of metropolitan statistical areas, which proxy regional economies. Cluster analysis subsets metropolitan areas according to their position on several theory-driven dimensions. Discriminant analysis then identifies the variables most closely associated with each subset’s statistical grouping. The results respond to three questions: (1) Are regions with legacy characteristics homogeneous in population size? (2) Do socioeconomically troubled regions share legacy characteristics? (3) Does the typology of metropolitan regions provide insights into the performance of regional clusters? The findings suggest that private investment and public policy must change regional economic development paths while intentionally including distressed jurisdictions and populations before the futures of central cities that experienced severe population losses can shift to a positive trajectory.

Universities and urban social structure: gentrification, studentification, and youthification in five United States legacy cities

ABSTRACT Anchor institutions, including universities, are often instrumentalized to spur revitalization in shrinking or declining cities. Yet universities’ implications for the social geographies of legacy cities remain understudied. We examine links between universities and gentrification, alongside “studentification” resulting from the concentration of students and “youthification” due to the concentration of young adults, in five legacy city Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the United States in 1980 and 2016 using data from the Census and American Community Survey. We identify differences in the relationships between these processes across the MSAs, reflecting to varying degrees patterns previously observed in strong-market cities. Proximity to universities is more closely associated with studentification and youthification over time, with the latter emerging after 1980, rather than conventional gentrification. We also identify racial dimensions of studentification and youthification processes. We highlight the broader social implications of urban universities, and the salience of studentification and youthification in new contexts.

Effects of urban greenspace configuration and native vegetation on bee and wasp reproduction.

Pollinator welfare is a recognized research and policy target, and urban greenspaces have been identified as important habitats. Yet, landscape-scale habitat fragmentation and greenspace management practices may limit a city's conservation potential. We examined how landscape configuration, composition, and local patch quality influenced insect nesting success across inner-city Cleveland, Ohio (U.S.A.), a postindustrial legacy city containing a high abundance of vacant land (over 1600 ha). Here, 40 vacant lots were assigned 1 of 5 habitat treatments (T1, vacant lot; T2, grass lawn; T3, flowering lawn; T4, grass prairie; and T5, flowering prairie), and we evaluated how seeded vegetation, greenspace size, and landscape connectivity influenced cavity-nesting bee and wasp reproduction. Native bee and wasp larvae were more abundant in landscapes that contained a large patch (i.e., >6 ha) of contiguous greenspace, in habitats with low plant biomass, and in vacant lots seeded with a native wildflower seed mix or with fine-fescue grass, suggesting that fitness was influenced by urban landscape features and habitat management. Our results can guide urban planning by demonstrating that actions that maintain large contiguous greenspace in the landscape and establish native plants would support the conservation of bees and wasps. Moreover, our study highlights that the world's estimated 350 legacy cities are promising urban conservation targets due to their high abundance of vacant greenspace that could accommodate taxa's habitat needs in urban areas.

Care and safety in neighborhood preferences for vacant lot greenspace in legacy cities

We conducted a post-construction survey of neighborhood preferences for street scale urban greenspace designed as green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) on vacant residential lots in Detroit, a city where greenspace has potential to address structural inequities that characterize legacy cities and affect well-being. We investigated residents’ preferences related to their perceptions of microscale elements: immediately perceptible fine grain landscape characteristics of plants, landform, water, and structural materials. Our results suggest that microscale elements affect residents’ perceptions of care and safety, which are strongly related to preferences for landscape treatments on vacant lots near their homes. For each of two replicate pilot sites, we developed 15 alternative landscape treatments (including a control vacant lot). Across treatments, we varied microscale elements that could act as cues to care (CTC) or cues to safety (CTS). In a survey of all households within 250 m of the two sites, we measured residents’ perceptions of and preferences for alternative treatments. Among CTC, regular mowing was essential to preference, and low-growing shrubs and forbs with prominent flowers characterize the most preferred treatments. A CTS, bollards separating vacant lots from public access, were preferred for most treatments. Lots planted with many trees were preferred by a smaller percentage of residents, and their perceptions of care were less related to their preference. Overall, preferences are more well-explained by perceived care than by perceived safety. Furthermore, perceived care explains the effect of perceived safety on residents’ preferences for vacant lots near their homes.

Just weeds? Comparing assessed and perceived biodiversity of urban spontaneous vegetation in informal greenspaces in the context of two American legacy cities

Legacy cities are increasingly understood as drivers of various informal landscape patterns and processes which arise from the conditions of economic contraction and neglect. This study finds that the presence of urban spontaneous vegetation (USV) contributes to the biodiversity of informal urban greenspaces (IGS) in two American legacy cities—Detroit and Flint, Michigan. A mixed-method research design was used to compare quantitative measures of in-situ biodiversity (Simpson’s Index), to perceptual measures of biodiversity and landscape preference using an online survey (N = 53). Results of a linear mixed model analysis show a statistically significant (p < 0.0001) quadratic (curvilinear) relationship between these variables, with respondents reporting higher preference for intermediate levels of IGS biodiversity as compared to IGS sites containing lower or higher biodiversity. This tendency, which is confirmed by several previous studies is referred to herein as the threshold effect. Findings further suggest that perceived biodiversity is not significantly correlated with measured biodiversity in IGS, and that perceived biodiversity may be impacted by limitations in visual representation and other factors. Results of a sentiment analysis suggest that unmaintained landscapes in legacy cities are subject to considerable negative sentiment among the public. The paper concludes with recommendations for more consistent methods of studying USV in IGS which combine in situ assessed and perceptual measures of biodiversity. It also examines actionable policy innovations and maintenance interventions for “intended wildness” that balance ecocentric and anthropocentric values in a world of diminishing municipal maintenance budgets.

Detecting individual abandoned houses from google street view: A hierarchical deep learning approach

Abandoned houses (AH) are focal points in urban communities by threatening local security, destroying housing markets, and burdening government finance in the U.S. legacy cities. In particular, individual-level AH detection provides essential information for fine-resolution urban studies, government decision-makers, and private sector practitioners. However, three primary conventional data sources (field data, utility data, and remote sensing data) cannot suffice to collect such fine-resolution data in the large spatial area via a cost-effective approach. To this end, Google Street View (GSV) imagery, which emerges as the mainstream open-access data source with global coverage, provides an opportunity to address this issue. Subsequently, a follow-up challenge confronting the detection of AH arises from the fact that it lacks an effective method that can discern authentic visual features from the redundant noise in GSV images. In this study, we aim to develop an effective method to detect individual-level AH from GSV imagery. Specifically, we developed a new hierarchical deep learning method to leverage both global and local visual features of AH in the detection. The method can be further divided into three steps: (1) Scene-based classification that can extract global visual features of AH was implemented through fine-tuning a pre-trained deep convolutional neural network (CNN) model. (2) We developed a patch-based classification method that can extract specific local features of AH. In this method, patches were generated from GSV images based on auto-detected local features, followed by being labeled as three categories: building patches, vegetation patches, and others. Two deep CNN models were employed to identify deteriorated building façade patches and overgrown vegetation patches, respectively. (3) Individual-level AH were detected by integrating scene classification results and patch classification results in a decision-tree model. Experimental results showed that the F-score of AH was 0.84 in a well-prepared dataset collected from five different Rust Belt cities. The proposed hierarchical deep learning approach effectively improved the accuracy comparing with the traditional scene-based method. In addition, the proposed method was applied to generate an AH map in a new site in Detroit, MI. Our study demonstrated the feasibility of GSV imagery in AH detection and showed great potential to detect AH in a large spatial extent.

Leaving the Old Neighborhood: Shifting Spatial Decisions by Black Home Buyers and Their Implications for Black Urban Middle Neighborhoods in Legacy Cities

ABSTRACT Homebuying by African American households in the United States dropped sharply after the foreclosure crisis but has rebounded since 2013. As Black homebuyers have returned strongly to the homebuying market, however, their spatial decisions have shifted significantly. Using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data for a cluster of large legacy cities, we found that in comparison to earlier periods, recent Black homebuyers are significantly more likely today to be buying homes in suburban rather than central-city locations and less likely to buy in predominantly African American rather than racially mixed census tracts within central cities. These preference shifts have particularly problematic implications for the predominantly Black middle-income neighborhoods that emerged in these cities in the 1960s and 1970s. Building on previous research that has documented a significant decline in socioeconomic and housing market conditions in those neighborhoods since 2000, we suggest that these shifts in homebuying patterns, although not causing those declines and arguably reflecting rational decisions by homebuyers, nonetheless represent an existential threat to these neighborhoods’ viability. To succeed in stabilizing or reviving these neighborhoods, efforts by public agencies or community organizations must address the reasons for their loss of homebuyers.

Review: Legacy Cities: Continuity and Change Amid Decline and Revival, by Tighe, J. Rosie and Stephanie Ryberg-Webster, eds

Review: <i>Legacy Cities: Continuity and Change Amid Decline and Revival</i>, by Tighe, J. Rosie and Stephanie Ryberg-Webster, eds

Vacant lot soil degradation and mowing frequency shape communities of belowground invertebrates and urban spontaneous vegetation

Vacant land in legacy cities is increasingly recognized as a resource to support biodiversity and improve the quality of life for residents. However, the capacity for vacant lot parcels to provide these benefits is influenced by current management practices and landscape legacies of urbanization, which typically results in degraded soil quality. The role of soil quality in supporting urban biodiversity and ecosystem functions is often overlooked when developing sustainable urban planning initiatives. This study investigated how soil physical and chemical properties influenced the community of urban spontaneous vegetation and soil invertebrates found within vacant lots mowed monthly or annually in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. We found that soil chemical and physical properties were strong predictors of soil-dwelling invertebrates, as vacant lots highly contaminated with heavy metals had simplified communities. Moreover, increased mowing frequency resulted in greater biomass and blooms of urban spontaneous forbs. Importantly, vacant lots dominated by urban spontaneous forbs and high bloom abundances also were contaminated with heavy metals, with implications for herbivores and pollinators using these resources. Our findings indicate that conservation initiatives must consider landscape legacies from industrial activity and local habitat management practices in order to support above and belowground habitat quality of greenspaces in urban ecosystems. Understanding how soil degradation impacts habitat quality and the delivery of ecosystem services from vacant land is essential for legacy cities to maximize their environmental benefits.

Self-Directed Learning on the Runway to Crafts Entrepreneurship

Many artisans practice self-directed learning to gain crafts expertise in non-academic settings. They can apply this skill for crafts entrepreneurship. A preliminary exploratory study supported by three crafts entrepreneurs cases explored their transition from artisanship to entrepreneurship. It begins to address the lack of literature at the nexus of crafts entrepreneurship and self-directed learning. Findings suggest artisans develop their product–market fit and solve business-related issues in self-directed learning cycles, exercising self-management at each step, and self-monitoring the outcomes. With profound implications to promote crafts entrepreneurship in resource-strapped small legacy cities, we present guidance for future research to develop this field.

Legacy Regions, Not Legacy Cities: Growth and Decline in City-Centered Regional Economies

Advocates for older central cities increasingly refer to them as “legacy cities” in an attempt to shift policy discussions from their social liabilities to their economic assets. In examining this concept, we place U.S. central cities within the context of their regions and use cluster-discriminant analysis to distinguish between groups of regional economies. The cluster analysis subsets metropolitan areas according to their shared position on several theory-driven dimensions. The discriminate analysis identifies the variables that are most closely associated with the statistical grouping of each subset. The results are used to answer a series of questions: 1) Is population size a good proxy for agglomeration? 2) Do small legacy regions exist? 3) Does the typology of legacy regions provide insights about the economic performance of the clusters? Our findings suggest that the economic development paths of regional economies have to change before the future of central cities that experienced severe population losses can shift to a positive trajectory.