Fringe cities: how to work with the inevitable decline?

With a rich manufacturing history during the industrial era, similar to many Rust Belt cities, Erie has been suffering from the pain of its continuous population and economic decline since the 1970s. The city is located within the Rust Belt and Great Lakes economy zones. Despite the economic decline during the post-industrialization period, Erie is well connected with the surrounding cities with sufficient railways and interstate highways. The decline of its manufacturing industries led to the massive layoffs from companies including the GE Locomotive.

‍Accompanying the layoffs is the population decline. In the 1960s, city planners predicted a 40% population growth from 1960 to 1985. In the same year, the population of Erie started to decline, and until the 2016 election, the population of Erie was below 100K. To save the city from decline, numerous planning efforts have been made to revitalize the downtown of Erie. From urban renewal projects to save the city from numerous planning efforts have been made to revitalize the downtown of Erie. From urban renewal projects in the 1950s to the recent State St Streetscape Plan by AECOM in 2010, most of the efforts were committed to the downtown commercial core.  

However, residential neighborhoods adjacent to the downtown commercial district have long been ignored and disinvested. The poverty zone within the city of Erie is greatly overlapped with the redlining zones in the 1940s, and the neighborhoods of people of color. Urban renewal took the perspective of downtown development as a way to lure middle-class White families from suburbs back to the city, while ignoring the growing community of Black and Brown families within the city. For the non-white households, many were unable to move to suburbs due to the racially restrictive covenants or the lack of financing for mortgages.

‍With systematic disinvestment in the downtown residents, the East Bayfront neighborhood is currently suffering from economic, housing and educational distress, with 43% of poverty, 31% of homeownership and 10% of adults with bachelor or higher degrees.Currently, with the establishment of Flagship Opportunity Zone and the Erie Downtown Development Corporation in 2017, there are increasing efforts to attract investment into the long-term development of Erie downtown.

‍Opportunities to resource the investment into the East Bayfront neighborhood also exists if a feasible framework could be made. Within this framework, funding can be invested in the young people of downtown and at the same time, renovating the severely high ratio of distressed houses.

To decrease the high ratio of distressed houses, the existing Erie Land Bank needs to expand its ownership of properties in the East Bayfront neighborhood. At the same time, a maker space can serve as a center for recycling and renovating houses, and an educational and career training program for the local youth.

The maker space would serve as a catalyst to initiate the overall framework to renovate the neighborhood. Situating it in the Flagship Opportunity Zone attracts funding that can later circulate through the home renovation process. Meanwhile, the maker space would train people to recycle materials from the demolition of distressed homes owned by the land bank, prototype innovative solutions within the fabrication space, present their works to the whole community in the courtyard, and later apply the reclaimed materials and ideas to the vacant lots and distressed houses in the neighborhood.

‍Supporters for this framework include a series of community organizations as well as increasing funding sources for the current downtown development. The following diagrams and collages are picturing the transformative process of an existing block in the East Bayfront neighborhood from 2021 to 2030.  

This project is aiming to present an alternative model to the downtown residential neighborhoods in small American cities today. These cities have been suffering from the declining manufacturing industries and populations, as well as limited access to investment and funding to renovate its distressing living and community space.

The maker space framework has the potential to be a self-sustaining model that recycles materials, as well as talents, to make sure the outer investment is truly spent on the people and the land of the low-income downtown neighborhoods, and at the same time, providing a promising future for those that has long been ignored by the city planners.