The Right to Dignity: Housing Struggles, City Making, and Citizenship in Urban Chile

Abstract

goods). If this is the case, smaller cities could also be the core of a more sustainable green world by promoting urban agriculture and urban food systems; for example, through allotments, also called community gardens (Chapter 8). Another possibility is promoting green infrastructure (e.g., redesigning parks so that they absorb runoff). Currently, about 200 American cities have community land trusts that take over properties made available by tax foreclosures, maintain them (often as green spaces), and then spin off the plots for more productive uses such as affordable housing. Planners could also help reverse the brain drain from smaller cities and rural areas and workers by attracting professionals from cities, who would remain connected remotely. However, attracting remote workers will require making these towns and cities more livable (Chapter 9). Small-city planners could learn from big-city place-making efforts, public murals, and public realms in the form of piazzas/plazas. For shrinking cities to stabilize, they will need to not only localize their economies but also build consensus, engage diverse communities, and sustain the vision over many years (Chapter 10). Achieving these goals will be tough, however. Decisions about the future are constrained by decisions made in the past (e.g., large and small cities have been overreliant on convention centers to solve economic problems). In addition, many small cities lack the capacity to plan or to carry out other than maintenance activities. Furthermore, American cities have “few if any organizational or institutional forums that bring people together across racial, ethnic, or cultural divides or [even] public spaces that are shared by diverse populations...” (p. 272). Despite these challenges, Mallach is sanguine about the prospects for the future of shrinking cities. I hope he is right. Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World has no significant flaws but has two standout strengths: clear, passionate writing and numerous valuable, programmatic suggestions for small-city stabilization from around the world. It is one of the most important planning books to come out in recent years.