Revitalizing the neighbourhood: The practices and politics of rightsizing in

Idora, Youngstown

Part of special issue on “The political economy of managing decline and

rightsizing” organised by Matthias Bernt and Manual Aalbers

Dr James Rhodes

Department of Sociology

Arthur Lewis Building

Oxford Road

Manchester

M13 9PL

Email: james.rhodes@manchester.ac.uk

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Revitalizing the neighbourhood: The practices and politics of rightsizing in

Idora, Youngstown

Abstract

In recent years, growing academic attention has been placed upon the varied strategies of

rightsizing employed by cities to address the interrelated dynamics of economic and urban

decline and depopulation. Within this body of work the focus has primarily been placed on

the city-level. By focusing on the practices and politics of urban revitalization within the

Idora neighbourhood in Youngstown- a neighbourhood widely heralded as a success story-

this paper deepens understandings of how rightsizing is enacted within more micro-contexts.

Drawing on demographic data, documentary analysis, and observation, it reveals the process

to be complex in its manifestations. Placing the critical gaze upon the neighbourhood level

exposes actualities of urban reconfiguration in the context of stark deindustrialization, decline

and depopulation, elucidating the actors and practices involved, in addition to its politically

charged and contested nature. It concludes with a discussion of the wider implications of this

case study both in terms of the possibilities and pitfalls of rightsizing.

Keywords: Rightsizing, Shrinking Cities, Urban decline, Urban redevelopment

Introduction

On Youngstown Ohio’s South Western side, the Idora neighborhood has been a hub of

activity in recent years. Since 2009 the Youngstown Neighborhood Development

Corporation (YNDC), a non-profit community development corporation (CDC), has acted as

orchestrator of a sweeping program of urban revitalization there. With its headquarters

located in the neighborhood on reclaimed land it shares with its own Iron Roots Farm, the

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organization, along with an active residents’ association, has been busily engaged in the

material and symbolic reconstitution of place. Drawing upon funds from a range of public,

private and philanthropic entities and employing a diverse set of practices- including

demolition, housing rehabilitation, greening and beautification, urban rebranding, and the

promotion of civic participation- this predominantly black, low and middle-income

neighborhood has become the site of a profound transition. Vacant homes have been cleared

or remodelled, surplus land converted into public gardens, and a frayed urban social fabric

reenergised through the activities of local residents, new socially oriented programs, and the

targeting of community problems.

The recent redevelopment of the Idora neighborhood has occurred within the context of the

city of Youngstown’s 2010 Plan. In 2005, the administration launched a new urban strategy,

which in breaking with the conventions of urban planning, proposed that the city should

embrace its smaller size (City of Youngstown, 2005). In doing so, it became the first U.S.

city to enact such an approach, leading the way for municipalities like Detroit, Flint, and

Rochester to follow suit. In Youngstown, as with rightsizing policies introduced elsewhere

(Aalbers, 2014a; Schindler, 2016; redacted, this issue), neighborhoods were selectively

deemed either suitable or unsuitable sites of resources and targeted intervention. Within this

schema, Idora was identified as a place where urban revitalization strategies might be

employed to “stabilize” this area of the city. Here then, both Youngstown and the Idora

neighborhood are located at the vanguard of a new form of what has variously been termed

“smart decline” or most widely- “rightsizing”. The policy strategies such terms name

emerged in response to the challenges faced by cities and neighborhoods forced to wrestle

with the legacies of sustained patterns of deindustrialization, depopulation and urban decline.

Indeed, cities across the globe are seeking to re-imagine and remake urban terrains in ways

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that acknowledge “urban shrinkage” and related decline as “a durable, structural component

of urban development” (Martinez-Fernandez et al, 2012, p.218).

Reflective of this emergent urban policy, a growing body of work has shifted academic

attention away from more established concerns regarding the anatomies and consequences of

“urban decline” to the remedies enacted to address the resulting social and material

abandonments and inequities. Here, cities experiencing extreme abandonment, such as

Youngstown and Detroit, are seen as marking not only the demise of the postwar city but also

its reconstruction in ways that resist and reproduce urban orthodoxies (Mallach 2012; Ryan,

2012; Dewar and Thomas 2013; Smith and Kirkpatrick 2015). Smith and Kirkpatrick (2015,

p. vii) argue how in the case of Detroit, the city cannot simply be understood through tropes

of “loss, decay and dereliction”, but also as a space, “containing the embryonic possibilities

of new and/or renewed forms of social integration and economic development.” The

academic interest in “rightsizing” then nestles within urban debates both established and

emergent. “Rightsizing” has been cited as evidence of the re-emergence of urban-renewal era

policies of “triage” (Kirkpatrick, 2015) and “planned shrinkage” (Aalbers, 2014a), as well as

the continuing and deepening of urban neoliberalization and the routinization of “urban

austerity” (Akers, 2013; 2015; Hackworth 2015; Hackworth, and Nowakowski, 2015).

Alternatively, it has been framed as an opportunity for the initiation of innovative, more

equitable and sustainable modes of urban living (Schilling and Logan 2008; Ryan 2012; Parr

2014; Schindler, 2014; 2016).

Within this body of work, studies have overwhelmingly focused upon rightsizing policies at

the city-level (Wiechmann and Pallagst, 2012; Akers, 2013; 2015; Hackworth, 2015;

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Hackworth and Novakowski, 2015). What a detailed excavation of the case of Idora enables

instead, is to focus the critical gaze upon the neighborhood itself, providing insights into the

practices and politics of rightsizing as they materialize in more micro-contexts. This is

particularly important given that ‘right-sizing’ is implemented unevenly and inconsistently

both between but also within cities. Occupying positions at the heart of an urban plan

identified as pioneering in its approach to ‘rightsizing’, both the Idora neighbourhood and the

city of Youngstown are important sites through which to analyse these trends. Indeed, in

Youngstown and beyond, the revitalization of the Idora neighbourhood has been seen as

evidence of successful approaches to urban shrinkage and decline, with Idora attracting

visitors from other US cities and as far afield as Japan and Germany, from those eager to see

the work that the YNDC has undertaken there.

The paper draws upon a combination of analysis of key strategic documents relating to the

revitalization of the Idora neighbourhood and local media coverage, as well as observations

made on a series of visits to the neighbourhood between 2010 and 2015. It advocates a view

of ‘rightsizing’ as an urban project hybrid in its formulations and enactments; a reactive but

also a productive set of techniques, which does not simply respond to new urban realities but

also remakes neighbourhoods in specific ways. The argument proceeds via the following

structure: firstly, the paper is situated in relation to the emergent academic literature

exploring ‘rightsizing’ and the particular focus on the neighbourhood-level is justified.

Secondly, an overview of the Youngstown 2010 Plan is offered, explicating the position of

the Idora neighbourhood within these plans and the role of the YNDC within such policies.

The remainder of the article considers the “rightsizing” activities in Idora arguing that this

work represents a hybridized project exhibiting a combination of what Hackworth (2015;

2015a) has termed, “market first”, “managerial” and “non-market activities”. These activities

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are driven by two underpinning logics: firstly, a desire to re-marketize the Idora

neighborhood as a “neighborhood of choice” for both residential and commercial investors;

and secondly and relatedly, to ‘re-socialise’ Idora through an active process of social and

cultural re-integration and engagement, albeit in ways that operate to marginalise poorer

residents. Such attempts cohere around a privileging of homeownership and values of

propriety, responsibility, and civic engagement as a means for neighbourhood stabilization,

revitalization and effective “rightsizing”. The article concludes by considering both the

pitfalls and possibilities represented through “rightsizing” strategies, situating the Idora case

within the wider politics of urban redevelopment in the context of urban shrinkage and

decline. It is argued that this particular example of ‘rightsizing’ is indicative of an emergent

approach to urban citizenship, in which neighborhoods deemed saveable are subject to new

forms of social and economic integration, working to further entrench uneven urban

geographies.

Urban Decline, Shrinkage, and ‘Rightsizing’

In recent years, there has been growing interest in processes of urban depopulation, decline

and abandonment. While these processes are established features of urban environments and

urban studies, cities variously identified as “shrinking”, “declining” or “abandoned”, have

come to be seen as urban forms in need of both practical and theoretical intervention

(Hollander and Nemeth, 2011; Mallach, 2012; Dewar and Thomas, 2013; Smith and

Kirkpatrick, 2015). Historically, cities have been conceptualized and approached as sites of

growth (or potential growth) with “shrinkage” seen as a largely anomalous and temporary

phenomenon. However, sustained patterns of deindustrialization, suburbanisation, urban

decline, racism and segregation, are defining features of increasing numbers of cities, present

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not as discrete, atypical events within arcs of urban expansion but as pervasive features of

contemporary urban spaces (Pedroni, 2011; Beauregard, 2012; Martinez-Fernandez et al,

2012; Mallach, 2012).

While such cities are not confined to any one country or region, they are shaped by the

specific economic, political and institutional contexts in which they are located. In the United

States, it is the former industrial cities of the northeast and Midwest that have been hit

particularly hard. Here, throughout the “Rust Belt” combinations of profound job losses,

recession, housing and foreclosure crisis, racism, state retrenchment, and the flight of public

and private capital have produced landscapes of striking abandonment and disrepair (Pedroni,

2011; Beauregard, 2012; Mallach, 2012; Dewar and Thomas, 2013; Hackworth, 2015).

Recently, academic focus has shifted away from exploring the roots and consequences of

decline to instead investigating the urban strategies employed to ameliorate and redress these

conditions. This developing interest has been piqued by the emergence of urban strategies

that have purportedly eschewed a commitment to ‘growth’ and instead planned for- or in the

context of- shrinkage. Here cities facing marked depopulation and related patterns of decline,

such as Youngstown, Detroit, and Buffalo, have embraced “rightsizing” policies. Although

not everywhere conceived or performed in the same way, such interventions seek to stabilize

cities in economic, infrastructural, environmental and demographic terms, through the

consolidation of resources, remediation of vacancy and blight, stabilization of the population,

improved services and quality of life, and renewed economic investment. The aim of places

enacting such approaches is to emerge as “smaller, healthier cities” (Mallach, 2012). While

these policies consist of diverse actors pursuing a range of different practices and operate in a

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variety of ways, “rightsizing” approaches tend to be based upon a number of key

components: “community development in salvageable parts of the city, administrative

restructuring for sustainable public services, democratic initiatives that encourage citizens to

contribute and direct the form of their city, and unbuilding or reshaping the city physically.”

(Hummel, 2015, p.401).

Within the burgeoning academic literature, rightsizing strategies have been treated in a

number of ways. In its most benign rendering, “rightsizing” has been seen as representing a

pragmatic response to observable urban realities of vacancy, blight and depopulation. Here it

is a strategy identified by some as an opportunity to remodel urban spaces in fiscally and

environmentally more efficient and sustainable ways (Schilling and Logan, 2008; Kildee et

al., 2009; Hummel, 2015). Others have pushed this further, seeing such spaces as offering a

more equitable reorganisation of urban life. Parr (2014) for instance, suggests that the

retraction of capital may provide a context in which a new commons may emerge, where

urban spaces are less shaped by and bound to the dictates of capital markets (see also

Schindler, 2014; 2016).

However, much emerging academic work has come to view “rightsizing” through a more

critical lens. Political economists have instead focused on such policies as marking the

intensification of exclusionary urban processes, underpinned by the dual logics of urban

neoliberalization and austerity (Akers, 2013; 2015; Aalbers, 2014; Hackworth, 2015, 2015a;

Hackworth and Nowakowski, 2015). Hackworth and Nowakowski, (2015, p.529) for

instance, have pointed to the way in which market-oriented rationalities have dominated

‘rightsizing’ policies in the United States as “a multiscalar, multidimensional set of forces

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and impulses…produce and reinforce a market-led approach to land abandonment within

many American cities.” Particularly significant here has been the relative lack of federal and

state resources available to cities accentuated by the recession and housing crisis, which

compel urban administrations to pursue more market-oriented responses to urban

depopulation and decline (Peck, 2012; Rhodes and Russo, 2013; Hackworth, 2015;

Hackworth and Nowakowski, 2015).

While this body of work has been pivotal in advancing our conceptualisations of

“rightsizing”, it has tended to exhibit a number of obfuscations, which this paper seeks to

productively exploit. Firstly, as (redacted) argue in this issue, there are often discrepancies

between planning ideas and actual forms of implementation, with existing work tending to

say more about the intentions of ‘rightsizing’ policies than their actual manifestations. There

is a need to examine not simply what policies assert but what they are used to do. A related

issue is the concentration of existing analysis at the city-level, which often obscures the

complexity and heterogeneity of “rightsizing” policies as they come to be enacted. Within

such analyses, both city planning policies and cities themselves are accorded an intelligibility,

a coherence that they rarely possess in practice. In trying to account for or develop typologies

for cities as a whole, the varied nature of “rightsizing” within cities is suppressed.

“Rightsizing” strategies consist of a series of diffused urban projects, initiated and practiced

by a range of different actors characteristic of the shift from central “urban government” to

more collaborative “urban governance” (Elwood, 2002; Lake and Newman, 2002; Bernt,

2009; Pedroni, 2011; Schatz, 2013). This is particularly important in the United States

context given the relative weakness of city administrations and planning departments

(redacted). In Detroit, for instance, Detroit Works, which brings together city administration,

philanthropic organisations, and CDCs, has been central to the orchestration of the city’s

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rightsizing strategy (Schindler, 2016; redacted, this issue). Similarly, in Youngstown, much

of the actual implementation of the 2010 Plan within the Idora neighborhood has been ceded

to the YNDC, rather than being overseen and implemented by the city administration.

The focus beyond the city-level is important given the uneven and inconsistent nature of

rightsizing, as even within cities, neighborhoods are conceived of and acted upon in different

ways. “Rightsizing” is imagined and enacted in ways that both reflect and refract fragmented

geographies. Indeed, while work has identified the different fates assigned to variously

classified neighborhoods (redacted; Aalbers, 2014; 2014a), less has been said about the actual

processes of “rightsizing” in these areas. Where research has looked at this it has tended, for

instance, to focus upon the prevalence of demolition within the most marginalised

neighborhoods (Hackworth, 2014). What the case of Idora presented below allows for is an

investigation into how “rightsizing” operates within a neighborhood identified as a target for

deeper redevelopment and investment. This is important as altering the focus of analysis

challenges some of the assumptions present within existing literature. To see “rightsizing” as

being solely characteristic of the deepening of urban neoliberalization, of urban austerity- or

indeed of more sustainable and equitable forms of living- misses the complex ways in which

all of these processes and qualities are simultaneously in evidence in cities like Youngstown

and neighborhoods such as Idora, albeit to differing degrees. What the focus on Idora reveals

is the competing logics that underpin rightsizing policies, and the need for a conceptualisation

of “rightsizing” as an urban strategy replete with multiplicity. Indeed, while the analysis

below remains minded of the embeddedness of neighborhoods within wider social, economic

and spatial arrangements, a focus on the more micro-practices of “rightsizing” adds an

important dimension to existing analyses.

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Idora, Youngstown and the 2010 Plan

The Youngstown 2010 Plan

In 2005, following an extensive process of planning and civic engagement, Youngstown

introduced its citywide 2010 Plan. The policy represented the first comprehensive planning

document the city had formulated since 1951- a strategy amended just once when it was

updated in 1974. The city that the 2010 Plan was oriented towards was very different from

that of the early 1970s. Since that time, the precipitous collapse of the city’s steel industry

occurred alongside ongoing flight of public and private capital as both residents and

businesses left the city for adjacent suburban areas and beyond. Once one of the nation’s

leading steel producers, the industry dramatically collapsed from 1977 onwards as within the

space of roughly a decade, the city lost 29,000 manufacturing jobs (Ott, 1987). These losses

have been compounded more recently as between 2000 and 2008, an estimated 24,000 jobs

were lost within the Mahoning Valley in which Youngstown is located (Schmidt, 2008).

Paralleling this, between 1950 and 2010, Youngstown’s population fell from a high of

approximately 168,000 to just under 67,000, representing a loss of over 60 per cent of its total

inhabitants. The collapse of the city’s tax base along with diminished state and federal

resources served to intensify social and physical decline.

The outcome of these processes is a city scarred by diminishing services and amenities, a

degrading of infrastructure, and a litany of social and economic ills including high

unemployment, crime, vacancy and poverty. 2006-2010 American Community Survey (ACS)

population estimates suggested that Youngstown had 7,041 vacant units, amounting to 19.8

per cent of the city’s total housing stock1. Similarly, for the same period the percentage of

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city families living in poverty was 27.2 per cent2. Indeed, in 2011, a Brookings Institution

report identified Youngstown as possessing the highest rate of concentrated poverty in the

nation as between 2000 to 2005-09, the proportion of residents living in extreme-poverty

tracts increased by over a third, to 49.7 per cent (Kneebone et al, 2011). As with other Rust

Belt cities such inequalities are not evenly distributed but are reflective of deep racial

cleavages, as the poorest and most disinvested neighborhoods within the city are

disproportionately black (Pedroni, 2011; Safransky, 2014; Hackworth, 2016).

The 2010 Plan represented a concerted attempt to address the degraded conditions and

depopulation that had occurred in the city. The reason it garnered such significant attention,

was because of how it explicitly proposed to do this by embracing Youngstown’s smaller size

as a means of urban reconfiguration. Rather than stating an intention to re-grow the city, the

plan instead sought to stabilize its population by improving the quality of the local

environment, economy, and infrastructure. The 2010 Plan was the basis for a redevelopment

strategy designed to replace a plan that “was without foundation and virtually obsolete” with

a new vision that would “provide a solid foundation for a cleaner, greener, and more efficient

city” (City of Youngstown, 2005, p.7). It represented “a strategic program to rationalize and

consolidate the urban infrastructure in a socially responsible and financially sustainable

manne”’ (ibid. p.18), enabling the city “to pick up the pieces and organize them to set the

stage for sustainable regeneration of the 21st century” (ibid. p.15). This strategy was forged

around a number of key goals: an acceptance of Youngstown as a smaller city than it had

historically been; an alignment of the city with “the realities of the new regional economy”;

“improving Youngstown’s image and enhancing quality of life”; and a “call to action: An

achievable and practical action-oriented plan to make things happen” (ibid. p.135).

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The aims have been pursued through a number of specific strategies: substantial reinvestment

in the city’s downtown core and economic development; a mobilization of the local citizenry;

and a process of neighborhood recovery and revitalization. Resembling closely the “planned

shrinkage” (Aalbers, 2014a) or “triage” (Kirkpatrick, 2015) approach, the city divided

neighbourhoods into categories of “stable”, “transitional”, and “weak” (City of Youngstown,

2005). Within this typology, “weak neighbourhoods” were those deemed to be, “beyond any

hope of short-term solutions and require comprehensive reinvestment strategies” (ibid., 2005,

pp. 34–35), exceeding the fiscal capabilities of the city. Such neighborhoods map onto

historical patterns of racism and segregation reflecting the racialised and classed cartography

of the city (Aalbers, 2014a; Hackworth, 2016). Within the 2010 Plan, those neighborhoods

classified as “weak” are disproportionately poor, black neighborhoods. Meanwhile, “stable

neighborhoods” tend to be more largely white in their racial composition and exhibit lower

rates of poverty, vacancy, and higher property values (see figure 1).

(Insert Fig. 1 Comparison of Idora neighborhood with city of Youngstown and selected

other neighborhoods across a range of indicators based on 2005-2009 American

Community Survey Five-Year Estimates).

Positioned between these “weak”, and those neighborhoods seen as “stable”, Idora was

identified as a ‘transitional’ space- a neighbourhood-type, “exhibiting a substantial

population base but which still display tax and structure problems” that “have not reached the

point of no return and could benefit by city program intervention.” (ibid., p.45). By virtue of

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this it was viewed within the 2010 Plan as an appropriate site for strategic investment,

illustrating Hackworth’s (2014; 2015) observation that while previous manifestations of

“rightsizing” and urban policy sought to focus on the “mortally wounded”, in the

contemporary period sustained and targeted investment is reserved for the relatively more

stable neighborhoods.

Identifying Idora for revitalization

The Idora neighborhood, located to the southwest of the city, took its name from the Idora

Park amusement park and is bounded by the commercial corridor of Glenwood Avenue to the

east and Mill Creek Park to the west (see figure 2). Founded in 1899, Idora Park was

constructed by a streetcar company and drew visitors from far and wide, playing host to a

range of music, sporting and leisure activities, buoyed by a relatively wealthy local

population and the tradition of local unions to hold family days and events for workers there.

Its decline in the 1970s was linked to both the deindustrialization that was occurring in the

city as well as sustained depopulation. Following a fire in 1984, Idora Park permanently

closed and the 26-acre site remains vacant and is currently owned by a local church

(Beniston, 2008, p.16).

(Insert Fig 2. Map of Idora neighborhood taken from Beniston, 2008, p.15)

Like the amusement park, the experience of the neighborhood that shares its name is also

testament to entrenched processes of decline, depopulation, and segregation. Between 1970

and 2000, the Idora neighborhood experienced profound demographic transitions reflective of

trends in northern industrial American cities. This period was one of consistent population

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losses hastened by the loss of jobs and white flight out of the area, which accelerated with the

commencement of the 1950s. In 1970, 84 per cent of the neighborhood population was white

with just 16 per cent made up of African-Americans. By 2000, 79 per cent of the population

was African-American, with the white population declining to 17 per cent, as black residents

were able to move into a neighbourhood albeit at a time when disinvestment and deterioration

became increasingly defining features (ibid., p.18). Between 1990 and 2010, the population

of the neighborhood declined by 37 per cent, from 2,378 to 1,504 (YNDC, 2014a, p.205).

This contributed to high rates of vacancy as during the same timeframe the percentage of

vacant houses increased from 9 per cent to 19 per cent (ibid., p.206). Those residents that

remained were characterized by increasing impoverishment, mirroring wider trends in

Youngstown and beyond, as central cities have come to be defined by increasingly

impoverished and increasingly African-American populations. According to 2005-2009, ACS

estimates, 22.4 per cent of families lived below the poverty line. 96.6 per cent of

neighborhood residents receiving food stamps were black or African-American3.

At the time of the conception of the 2010 Plan the Idora neighbourhood, like many others

across Youngstown, was home to a majority black, low and middle-income population and as

elsewhere in the city, it was marred by high crime, high rates of vacancy, blight and

abandonment. Compared to city averages, Idora exhibited a disproportionately large black

population and higher rates of unemployment (see figure 1). Idora also had high rates of

housing vacancy with 107 of 750 units vacant (ibid. p.20). However, there were a number of

features of the neighborhood that compared favourably with Youngstown as a whole, and

particularly with those “weaker” neighborhoods (see figure 1). The population, for instance,

had higher numbers of college graduates than average and property values remained

relatively strong in relation to the rest of the city. Relatedly, in 2010 the neighbourhood

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registered high levels of owner-occupation, with 66 per cent of housing units lived in by

homeowners, compared to 58 per cent for the city as a whole (YNDC, 2014a, p.206). Also,

the area was heavily residential, favoring single-family, owner-occupied dwellings, and

lacking larger multi-family apartment blocks.

Symbolically, the neighbourhood is particularly important given the former presence of Idora

Park, which kindles nostalgic memories of a more affluent time for the city. Similarly, the

housing stock in the neighborhood also contains significant numbers of large, historic homes

marked out by their grandeur, unlike property to be found in most other parts of the city and

suburbs. These streets also neighbour Mill Creek Park, which acts as a natural boundary to

the neighbourhood. The lakes, woodlands, and trails in the park again make it particularly

attractive to existing and prospective residents. This means that the neighbourhood lacks

some of the more entrenched and stigmatizing “racial inscription” that can work to preclude

investment (Pedroni, 2011:212). Economically, the neighborhood’s proximity to Glenwood

Avenue, a main commercial thoroughfare, also made it a site of potential redevelopment

(Beniston 2008, p.30). Politically, the neighbourhood organisation- Idora Neighborhood

Association (INA), which formed in 2007 and emerged as part of the YNDCs strategy has

developed into one of the strongest neighbourhood groups in the city. Here then a host of

economic, physical, and symbolic factors- drawing upon urban imaginaries of race, class and

nature- made it an area targeted for revitalization.

Enacting rightsizing

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While it was the city-planning department that identified Idora as a site for intervention, the

lack of resources at the disposal of the city administration and its focus on downtown and

economic development activities, meant that the responsibility for the revitalization of the

Idora neighborhood was ceded to the YNDC. The YNDC was formed by Ohio State

University planning graduate and Youngstown native, Ian Beniston. He, inspired by the 2010

Plan, and in conjunction with the INA (which Beniston helped to form) and the City of

Youngstown, developed a comprehensive workplan for the neighbourhood while studying.

This was approved by the city in March 2008 and Beniston, with the support of the City and

the Raymond John Wean Foundation, founded the YNDC in 2009.

The devolving of such activities to CDCs is typical of urban redevelopment in the United

States more widely, as the retrenchment of city resources has seen many neighborhood

development activities orchestrated by non-state actors, particularly CDCs (Lake and

Newman, 2002; Newman and Ashton, 2004; Jonas and McCarthy, 2009; Thomson, 2013;

Schindler, 2016). Where the city has been directly involved in neighborhood activities in

Youngstown, this has been largely in relation to demolition activities, legislative actions

around housing and zoning codes, and the securing and distribution of state and federal funds

for community development (Newman and Ashton, 2004). The YNDC has operated with

funding from a range of public, private and philanthropic entities- notably the Raymond John

Wean Foundation- as well as successfully competing for state and federal grants. According

to the YNDC’s 2015 annual report, the organisation received $2.1 million in grant funding

(YNDC, 2016:8). Similarly, the previous year it reported grants of $2.9 million (YNDC,

2015). Indeed, as with the Detroit Works project, despite the central role that the YNDC has

played within the 2010 Plan, it has only been partially reliant on city funding. In concert with

the INA, the YNDC has been engaged in a sweeping programme of redevelopment. As stated

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in a 2014 report, the aim of the YNDC is to focus upon the “transformation of vulnerable,

undervalued and transitional neighborhoods into healthier places where people are willing to

invest their time, energy, resources and where residents can manage their own issues.” (2014,

p.3). The quote is particularly illustrative of the leading role that CDCs play within

contemporary regeneration in the US, and also the devolving of neighbourhood solutions to

residents, who in concert with local non-state institutional actors are expected to ameliorate

what are wider, structural patterns of disinvestment (Lake and Newman, 2002; Kinder, 2014;

Hackworth, 2015).

Rightsizing, remediation and creating ‘Neighborhoods of Choice’:

Re-marketing Idora

It is clear that under the auspices of the 2010 Plan, it was its relative market advantages that

lead to the Idora neighbourhood being targeted as a site for intervention. As mentioned, this

is redolent of the wider shift in relation to distressed urban spaces, where rather than

resources being channelled into the most deprived neighbourhoods they are instead

strategically invested where there is a greater likelihood of “success”, which itself is

measured largely through recourse to housing markets and the anticipated impact of such

investment on property prices (Newman and Ashton, 2004; Mallach, 2012; Thomson, 2013;

Akers, 2015; Hackworth, 2015). It is perhaps unsurprising then that within Idora itself, the

plans for the neighborhood formulated by the YNDC in line with the 2010 Plan, have

focused principally on steadying the housing market and stimulating increased investment

from both existing homeowners and prospective occupiers and investors. Indeed, in its 2010

Idora Neighborhood Workplan, central amongst the list of the organization’s strategic

objectives were plans, “To rebuild market confidence in neighborhoods through strategic

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reinvestment and neighborhood improvement activities”, in order “to increase wealth and

asset building through the appreciation of home values and other advancements” (YNDC,

2010, p.4).

The approach in Idora parallels the CDC activities observed by Thomson (2013) in similar

“middle neighbourhoods” in Baltimore developed during the 1990s. Here, the “Healthy

Neighborhoods” approach eschewed traditional community development discourses offered

by non-profits in explicitly embracing and emphasizing the aim of increasing property values.

Similarly, the YNDC has sought to stimulate market-demand organised around the creation

of Idora as a neighborhood of “choice” for responsible investors (YNDC, 2014, p.4). Such

strategies are indicative of the central role that low and middle-income home ownership have

come to play within revitalization attempts in neighborhoods with weak housing demand

since the late-1990s as reliance on non-governmental funding encourages the development or

stimulation of privately-owned property (Newman and Ashton, 2004; Boehlke, 2012).

Similarly, the focus on the “responsibility” of residential investors is a loaded term, shifting

emphasis for the fiscal challenges of the neighbourhood onto residents rather than systemic

processes and the actions of financial institutions.

The YNDC has pursued these aims through the deployment of a range of practices organised

around attempts to reduce the housing supply and to stimulate demand- what has been termed

“rightsizing markets” (Kildee et al, 2009; Boehlke, 2012; Mallach, 2012). In terms of

managing the supply of housing and land, this has been achieved in a number of ways.

Firstly, and as Hackworth has noted (2014), demolition has been widely utilised as a means

of ridding the neighbourhood of vacant and blighted housing. Secondly, through the transfer

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of side-lots acquired through the local land bank, homeowners have been encouraged and

able to acquire property, reverting surplus and delinquent land back into private ownership.

Other abandoned properties acquired via delinquency procedures, or directly from banks or

owners have been rehabilitated and sold to private owner-occupiers. In 2015, for instance, the

YNDC and Mahoning County Land Bank worked together to acquire up to six tax-delinquent

and vacant homes in the neighbourhood. Here, the Land Bank purchases the properties on

which back taxes are waived and then transfers them to the YNDC for $550 dollars each (the

cost to the land bank of the country prosecutor’s office foreclosure fees). The houses are then

rehabilitated and sold privately (Skolnick, 2015a). For Hackworth (2015a), this is a key

strategy within what he terms ‘market-first’ approaches to land abandonment, focused upon

outcomes aimed at increasing private ownership. This tactic has also been reflected in the

attempts of the YNDC to stimulate demand. Here, an aggressive campaign of neighbourhood

branding in which homeowners are recruited as active ambassadors for the area and

encouraged to convey “positive messages”, has involved the installation of artists murals,

new street signs reflecting the historic identity of the neighborhood, physical improvements

to streets and lots, and the introduction of community amenities such as pocket parks, an

urban farm and a farmers market.

Residents have also been incentivized to maintain properties through both more active code

enforcement but also financial support for home repairs, which has worked to improve the

conditions of both rental and privately-owned properties (YNDC, 2010; 2014). The aim of

this strategy is to increase not only the retention and investment of existing residents but also

to attract “new homeowners that will invest, increasing the overall homeownership rate, and

[increase] property values” (YNDC, 2010, p.7). In conjunction with local financial

institutions, the YNDC is able to offer subsidies and financing to promote homeownership

20

amongst low- and moderate-income residents. Here in a context in which private finance has

largely bypassed Idora and Youngstown more broadly, the YNDC has been able to offer its

own finance to prospective homebuyers with more favourable rates of interest and less

demanding credit scores. While not the same as more traditional processes of gentrification

led by private developers, the activities in Idora bear significant resemblances to strategies

identified in inner-city Newark by Newman and Ashton (2004). Here they observed the

increasing role that city administrations and CDCs have assumed in the promotion of

gentrification-style development. While in Idora this does not involve new construction or the

destruction of public housing, the rehabilitation of homes or their acquisition through tax-

reversal processes is used to attract newer, generally more affluent, residents in order to buoy

the local housing market. Indeed, some rehabilitated properties have been reserved for low to

moderate-income residents, however, of those properties sold openly to the private market,

these have commanded sales prices that well exceed the citywide average, which stood at just

$21,327 in 2013 (YNDC, 2014a, p.4). As will be discussed in more detail below, this will and

is serving to alter the racial and class composition of the neighbourhood.

The focus on improving the residential market has been augmented by attempts to reconstruct

the neighbourhood as a site for commercial activity and investment. The Glenwood Avenue

commercial corridor has been targeted by the YNDC for physical remediation with the

removal of blight and vacant structures. In 2012, the YNDC was involved in the brokering of

a deal, supported through financial incentives that brought the discount national grocery store

chain, Bottom Dollar Food, located on Glenwood Avenue (Henkel, 2012). Similarly, the

YNDC has offered both business loans and classes for local residents in the hope of

stimulating economic activity. In 2014, funded by a grant from the Ohio Community

Development Corporation Association, it started offering loans of between $5,000 to $15,000

21

dollars to micro-businesses with fewer than five employees (Hall, 2015). The construction of

the YNDC’s own 1.7 acre Iron Roots Farm in 2012 and the training and employment of local

residents in urban agriculture has been used as an attempt to generate renewed economic

investment and opportunities in the neighbourhood, as well as to address the problem of food

desertification and a lack of access to healthy and fresh produce (Milliken, 2012). Here, there

is an anticipation that those residents able to take advantage of such training will benefit from

the increased opportunities which it is hoped will accrue to the neighborhood.

Beyond marketization?

The normalization and prioritization of market-oriented activities referred to by Hackworth

(2015a) are clearly evident in attempts to brand and sell the Idora neighbourhood and in the

emphasis placed on private property and its ownership. However, the YNDC has worked to

ensure that market activity is embedded within a wider framework aimed at raising

neighbourhood quality of life. This appears to be different from the situation identified in

Detroit (Akers, 2013; 2015; Hackworth, 2015a) where ‘market-oriented’ policies dominate

the local policy terrain. Within the Idora neighborhood it is apparent that in comparison the

role of market logics in ‘rightsizing’ have exerted influence in more muted fashion. This

seems to be a result of the power of the YNDC, over and above those of private interests

within the neighbourhood itself. This is perhaps due to the extent of the surplus land and a

lack of clear present or future private demand, and the general absence of partnerships with

private investors in Idora. Schatz (2013, p.100) has suggested that the relative weakness of

private business within the formulation of the 2010 Plan and the strength of local public and

non-profit actors has meant a greater focus than elsewhere on “land use planning issues (for

instance, excess infrastructure) and the social issues associated with them (such as the rise in

22

crime in neighborhoods with vacant homes), rather than traditional ‘going for growth’

economic development.” The case of Idora would seem to support this. For instance, in

addition to the greater deployment of what Hackworth (2015a) terms ‘managerial’ strategies

such as code enforcement, the YNDC has also engaged in a series of ‘non-market’ activities

to improve the neighbourhood and make it a more attractive space.

According to Hackworth “non-market” strategies involve, the removal of “land from private

ownership for various social or environmental purposes” (2015a, p.78). In the absence of

pressure for new housing construction or significant housing or commercial demand, land

acquired from the land bank has been used for purposes less shaped by private interests,

something Schindler (2014) also identifies in Flint. Indeed, while as Hackworth and

Nowakowski (2015) note land banking systems in Ohio and elsewhere favour the transfer of

land into private, “productive” use, the YNDC with the support of the city administration and

through a close partnership with the Mahoning County Land Bank has been able to influence

such practices at the micro-level (Nelson, 2015). For instance, in addition to the rehab of

salvageable vacant properties, land transferred to the YNDC has been used to create areas of

wildflowers and plants that require little maintenance and can reverse processes of soil

contamination, as well as public pocket parks to be used by and maintained by residents

through its “Lots of Green” programme. Additionally, land has been transferred to the

ownership of the Mill Creek Metropark system-, a public park governed by an appointed

Board of Trustees, while a newly established community garden has been entrusted to the

INA to manage. Significant land has also been acquired by the YNDC and converted into a

working farm and its organizational headquarters, which while retaining an emphasis on

private ownership is used for enterprises whose aim is not to produce financial profits. More

recently, since the closure of the Bottom Dollar grocery store following its takeover by Aldi

23

in 2014, the site has been unable to attract new commercial owners. However, in a proposal

submitted to the city in May 2016, ONE Health Ohio, a non-profit health provider for low-

income patients, plan to take over the building with the city accepting a lower price than

valued for the land (Skolnick, 2016).

In this sense, while market-oriented thinking has guided ‘rightsizing’ strategies in

Youngstown, this has been less pronounced than observed elsewhere, as land has also been

explicitly redirected away from private ownership. Where private investment has been

encouraged this has been done so in a way that seeks to further wider neighborhood interests.

The hybridity of the practices pursued in Idora are further illustrated in the next section,

where focus is placed on attempts to ‘re-socialise’ the neighborhood, as ‘rightsizing’ reveals

itself to be about a reorganisation of the social fabric of the area and its citizenry, as well as

its physical environment.

(Re-)Socialization of the Neighborhood

While much of the “rightsizing” of Idora has been aimed at re-marketizing- albeit in ways

less determined by private interests- the YNDC has also attempted to what might be termed

re-socialize the neighbourhood through aesthetic changes and the cultivation of a more

active, engaged, responsible, and aspirational local citizenry. It is asserted in planning

documents that the neighbourhood lacks appropriate and valued forms of sociality, which the

organisation strategically seeks to inculcate. Indeed, key to making places like Idora

“neighbourhoods of choice” is the need to address the wider social fabric of the area. A

defining feature of distressed neighbourhoods in the United States, and particularly in the

24

context of cities experiencing extreme depopulation and urban decline, are the litany of social

ills that animate the terrain. In Idora, as across Youngstown more generally, the 2010 Plan

and the activities of the YNDC have been motivated by attempts to improve quality of life

issues, relating to high unemployment, poverty, crime, and gang activity. Indeed, crime has

historically been a particular problem for Idora. The neighbourhood plan produced in 2008

identified how, “Burglaries, gun violence and vacant house fires are among the most

troubling examples of crime”. The extent of these issues was revealed by the fact that,

“reports of gunfire more than tripled from 2005 to 2006 from 30 in 2005 to 104 in 2006.’

Similarly, ‘in total, there were 1,443 incidents of serious crimes against persons between

2002 and 2006” (Beniston, 2008, p.40).

In working to improve the social fabric, demolition has been an important tool, as vacant

houses have been shown to be associated with high rates of crime such as arson and drug

sales and usage. In response to this, the transformation of the physical environment through

demolition and the ‘greening’ of vacant lots have been employed as a way to alleviate social

problems such as crime but also food desertification, public health, and unemployment. A

study conducted into the effects of these ‘greening’ initiatives conducted in two

neighbourhoods in Youngstown- including Idora- found that between 2010 and 2014,

greened lots contributed to significant reductions in criminal activity, notably violent crime.

(Kondo et al, 2016). Similarly, the YNDC embarked upon a research project with the

University of Michigan examining the relationship between ‘greening’ and youth crime

prevention. To these ends, the organisation has directly employed marginalised youth in the

regeneration of the neighborhood. Here, resident youth have been tasked with the upkeep of

vacant, greened lots and a local 4-H group- the “Idora Wildcats”- has been established and

has competed in regional competitions. Similarly, following a proposal from the YNDC, in

25

April 2015, the city of Youngstown contracted the YNDC to implement a new program in

which 20 low-income people between the ages of 18-24 would be employed to “cut grass,

clean debris and illegal dumping sites, do light landscaping and board up vacant structures”

(Skolnick, 2015). The Iron Roots farm has also proven a vehicle through which food

desertification and access to healthy foods has been addressed. The local farmers market

offers discounts to those in receipt of food vouchers, while free classes in urban agriculture

and healthy eating are offered to residents. In 2014, for instance, the YNDC offered 27 free

classes on urban farming and 28 classes in how to cook more healthy meals for local

residents (YNDC, 2015, p.9)  

These activities form part of a wider organizational aim to improve the social cohesiveness of

the neighbourhood. Here, in the context of diminished public services and policing, the

engagement of the citizenry, evidenced in the close links that the YNDC has forged with the

INA, has become a central aim of the organization as it has sought to, “strengthen the social

fabric of neighbourhoods through the active participation and involvement of residents”

(YNDC, 2010, p.4). “Rightsizing” strategies in Idora have involved the development of an

active citizenry, running counter to the emphasis generally placed on “property rather than

people” which has been seen to characterize such policy initiatives (Beauregard, 2013, p.19).

While this citizenry has been mobilized, in part as a way of safeguarding private property,

more broadly it has been seen as a way to enact neighbourhood change in terms of improving

feelings of safety, efficacy, and “community”. The YNDC (2010, p.19) has expressed a

commitment to, “continue its strong partnership with Idora residents to promote broad based

participation and collaboration.” Here, there is a recognition that,

26

Physical improvements will not change a neighbourhood unless existing residents

are involved, invested and committed to the neighborhood’s transformation.

Neighborhood engagement, involvement, and partnerships are integral to the

success. (ibid.)

While elsewhere in this issue, (redacted), are justifiably sceptical of attempts at community

engagement, seeing it as a means of securing consent for predetermined and widely

detrimental sets of policies, within Idora (and given that many residents here are the

beneficiaries of strategic intervention rather than its casualties) the YNDC and the INA have

combined to define and tackle community problems. Notably, residents led a campaign to

close down a corner store associated with drugs and gun offences in the neighbourhood. In

2009, residents forced the store to close and established a dry precinct, restricting the sale of

alcohol (Skolnick, 2009). This is part of wider efforts, in conjunction with the police, to

address criminal and gang activity. In addition to this, over recent years residents frequently

engage in community clean-ups to board houses, the improvement of lots, and the

development of community projects. Here, through the ethos of community activities,

residents are encouraged to become key actors in remedying local problems, which while

reflecting and normalizing the outsourcing of state functions to local populations (Kinder,

2014), is also seen to promote a sense of community ownership and engagement.

Reconfiguring the local population

If the “rightsizing” of the Idora neighbourhood then has involved the mobilization of citizens

as a means of social and cultural regulation, strategies have also sought to cultivate the types

27

of residents residing there. This represents an attempt to not only “rightsize” markets, but also

to reconfigure its citizenry, something that has been noted as a central aspect of “rightsizing”

policies elsewhere (redacted). Here, in line with contemporary neoliberal orthodoxies,

‘homeownership’, entrepreneurialism and self- responsibility have been valorised as

necessary to the revitalization of declining urban spaces (Newman and Ashton, 2004;

Aalbers, 2011; Boelkhe, 2012). In Idora, the provision of classes in farming,

entrepreneurialism and healthy eating can be seen as strategies to enhance the capacities of

the local populace. Similarly, the promotion of home ownership and maintenance amongst

existing and new residents has been a key tool within this resocialization, in part through the

offering of support for home improvement grants. Clearly claims to remedy the social

cohesion and fabric of neighborhoods hold unstated, racialized and classed meanings,

privileging more educated and affluent residents.

The relative weakness of institutional financial support for property purchases in

Youngstown and the ability of the YNDC to offer its own loans have allowed it to promote

and regulate the entry of homeowners into the neighbourhood. This resocialization has been

done, for instance, through schemes subsidizing homeownership for ‘aspirational’ low and

moderate-income families. Here, home purchasers with incomes at or below 50 per cent of

the area median but who can contribute 3 per cent of the property value through personal

assets are able to gain assistance through a ‘Healthy Homeownership Program’. This program

includes, “soft requirements for new homebuyers to take on leadership roles in the

neighbourhood and become actively involved in the neighborhood’s revitalization”. Within

this scheme, new residents must commit to reside in the neighbourhood for a minimum of

three years and participate in “pre and post purchase homebuyer training.” This comprises

guidance on budgeting and home maintenance (YNDC, 2010, p.7-8).

28

Additionally, the resocialization of the neighbourhood has been pursued through the

rehabilitation and sale of properties through the private market, which sell for significantly

more than the city average. More recently, the YNDC has also developed a small number of

rental units, and the qualification for tenancy includes stipulations regarding credit scores,

incomes and the absence of convictions for felonies in the last three years and violent crimes.

Again, these units command rents that exceed city averages,

The outcome of these strategies is evident in an alteration of the demographic profile of

Idora, through the attraction of relatively more affluent residents. Comparing ACS estimates

from 2006-2010 and 2010-2014,while average incomes of residents and median home values

have declined and poverty status increased, this has occurred at lesser rates than for the city

as a whole. So in relative, rather than absolute terms, the Idora neighbourhood has seen its

position improve. Similarly, at a time when for the city as a whole, the proportion of

homeowners is declining and renters increasing, the inverse trend is evident in Idora.

Between 2006-2010 and 2010-2014, the proportion of owner-occupiers increased from 56.2

per cent to 58.4 per cent4. Similarly, monthly housing costs in the neighbourhood have

significantly increased at a time when across the city they have fallen. Between 2006-2010

and 2010-2014, monthly housing costs for all occupied homes in Idora rose from $545 to

$685, while across the city costs fell from $560 to $546. Rental costs were particularly

pronounced. For renters in Idora, monthly costs rose from $437 to $729, while increases

across the city were $549 to $6125. Perhaps most strikingly, reflecting uneven resources and

entrenched racialised inequalities, the black population of the neighbourhood during this

period declined from 84.8 per cent to 72.6 per cent, while the white population increased

from 11.7 per cent to 25.8 per cent6.

29

The emphasis placed on the resocialization of Idora reveals “rightsizing” to be an urban

project, not simply interested in the physical remediation of urban space, but also in wider

attempts to reinvigorate and reconfigure the social dynamics within contexts of urban

depopulation and decline. This is reflective of wider trends across urban America, where the

aim within contemporary urban policy is to diversify the composition of the population in

class and racial terms within a neighbourhood as a means of ameliorating inequality and

deterioration (Newman and Ashton, 2004; Aalbers, 2011). In Idora, “rightsizing” then

involves attempts to reorganize land, markets, and residents themselves. However, unlike

elsewhere, this has not been done through large-scale revanchism and displacement- at least

not in the short-term. Again, the relative lack of housing demand and the limited supply of

attractive available properties mean that the resocialization or ‘civilization’ (Aalbers, 2011)

of the neighbourhood has not occurred primarily through the importation of more affluent

residents, although this has undoubtedly occurred. Instead, there have been greater efforts to

engage the local citizenry, including low and moderate income-residents- to cultivate and

reinforce particular sets of norms and dispositions, albeit in ways that privilege the interests

of homeowners and potential investors. In a similar vein to how the re-marketization of Idora

has occurred in ways less shaped by market dictates, so too attempts to “rightsize” the

citizenry of the neighbourhood appear to be more focused on improving conditions for

existing residents- or at least those residents who it is thought can be re-socialized into values

of employment, self-responsibility, entrepreneurialism, and home ownership.

Conclusion: Thinking Through Idora

The case of the Idora neighborhood offers some important insights into “rightsizing” as it is

30

enacted in a particular context. In focusing upon the neighborhood rather than the level of the

city, the hybridized nature of this form of urban intervention is revealed as are its

ambivalences and contestations. In this instance, “rightsizing” manifests both the continuing

evolution of processes of urban neoliberalization but also new modes of social, cultural and

spatial regulation demonstrating more ‘managerial’ and “non-market” strategies- a product of

the particular political and economic context found in Idora. Here, while the selection of

Idora as a site for intervention is driven by market logics, and strategies have aimed to

enhance market activity within the neighborhood, the leadership of the YNDC and the

relative weakness of private interests and actors have led to a situation in which market

rationalities appear to have animated policy in more muted forms. Attempts to attract private

investment have occurred alongside measures aimed to improve the lives of existing

residents, through the encouragement of responsible forms of development, a re-energizing of

the social fabric, and the promotion of an active and neighborhood-oriented citizenry.

In Idora, “rightsizing” has been driven by a desire to create a “neighborhood of choice” via

the re-marketizing but also the re-socialising of the neighborhood. The example of Idora,

therefore, suggests a need for analyses of “rightsizing” strategies to be attuned to the

particularities of local contexts, pointing to a conceptualization of “rightsizing” as a strategy

diverse in its actualization and complex in its motivations and features. Broadening out the

analytic lens from Idora itself, it is necessary to conclude with three specific reflections on

the relationship of the case study under discussion with the wider urban context.

Firstly, while the YNDC, in conjunction with an array of funders, an active neighborhood

association and support from the city administration, has been effective in improving the

quality of life for many of the residents there, for swaths of city residents in Youngstown, the

31

urban landscape remains all too frequently a terrain of diminished public resources, economic

opportunity, and social insecurity (Rhodes and Russo, 2013). Indeed, while the Idora

neighborhood has been transformed this has occurred within a wider environment still

struggling, for instance, with a poor quality schooling system and high rates of housing

abandonment, unemployment, and poverty- problems all beyond the scope of CDCs (Lake

and Newman, 2002; Newman and Ashton, 2004; Jonas and McCarthy, 2009). Here, as

(redacted) state, the “rightsizing” practices enacted within cities are much less significant

than the wider urban processes that represent “de facto” “rightsizing”- processes of federal

and state retrenchment, shifts in economic production and enduring racial segregation.

Youngstown continues to lose population

Similarly, the fact that the YNDC operates largely through an assortment of grants rather than

stable funding, indicates both the limits of what they can achieve but also the precarity of

such types of urban governance arrangements. While Idora demonstrates what significant

levels of targeted investments can achieve in a neighborhood that retains significant market

advantages and assets, it is not something can be easily replicated elsewhere in Youngstown.

While the YNDC, which has been contracted to provide planning services to the city since

July 2013, has begun to gain traction beyond Idora, any impact has so far been limited to

similar types of spaces. Crossing Glenwood Avenue, for instance, into the Fosterville

neighborhood adjacent to Idora, reveals just how isolated and atypical the “rightsizing” of

Idora remains. Indeed, a neighborhood conditions report published by the YNDC (2014a, p.8-

9) indicated, according to a range of indicators, that just two of the city’s 32 neighborhoods

could be viewed as ‘stable’, with a further 6 classed as “functional”. For the majority of

neighborhoods, demolition and greening rather than the types of varied and sustained

physical and social intervention enacted in Idora seems to be their likely future (YNDC,

32

2014).

Secondly, the activities in Idora point to the ways in which “rightsizing” activities both serve

to normalize but also challenge the austere conditions in places such as Youngstown. As

argued by Elwood (2002) and Kinder (2014), the devolving of many neighborhood activities

and urban functions to local residents is emblematic of the tacit acceptance of the hollowing

out of the state under conditions of urban neoliberalization and austerity. However, it also

represents simultaneously a potential shift, coming to increase power, engagement and

expertise amongst residents who can then exert pressure on local political actors. Certainly in

Youngstown this has occurred, as the city has been compelled to revise demolition practices,

vacant property ordinances, code enforcement, and nuisance abatement in light of the actions

of both residents and the YNDC. In Idora, for instance, the INA has over recent years,

exerted significant pressure on both the city administration but also businesses deemed

detrimental to the neighborhood as well as negligent property owners and “slum landlords”.

However, the danger is that such influence is concentrated in the hands of specific actors,

principally those that enjoy property rights in areas with relatively strong neighborhood

organizations. Indeed, it has been the presence of the YNDC that has strengthened the

efficacy of local residents.

Thirdly, and relatedly, the case of Idora highlights the politically charged and uneven nature

of “rightsizing” as it reproduces both spatial and social distinctions. Certainly, the

development of Idora has produced admiration but also envy and frustration amongst other

city residents whose own neighborhoods are not seeing the same concerted attempts to

ameliorate negative urban conditions. The likely outcome of this is the deepening of already

33

fragmented geographies, as the Idora neighborhood experiences a more positive trajectory

than other parts of the city, which continue to witness substantial disinvestment, depopulation

and decline. Similarly, within Idora itself, the marketization of the neighborhood is likely to

accentuate racial and class inequalities. In 2011, for instance, the median household income

for black residents was $21,066 compared to $50,648 for whites- the widest disparities in the

city (YNDC, 2014a, p.205)- demonstrating a clearly bifurcated demographic. This is likely to

deepen as more affluent and disproportionately white homeowners enter the neighbourhood.

Additionally, the re-socialization of the neighbourhood through the valorization of

homeownership and civic participation, can, as Newman and Ashton (2004) observed in

Newark, intensify divisions between homeowners and poorer, disproportionately black

residents, as the latter become both materially and symbolically excluded from conceptions

of neighbourhood and community (see Aalbers, 2011). This is both a symbolic process and a

material process; indeed, the outcome of reducing supply and increasing demand for housing,

as survey estimates referenced above suggests, will be increases in property prices and rents

which will likely force out low-income residents or prospective residents over time.

In summary, the practices that have been utilised in Idora are instructive in terms of the

“rightsizing” of distressed US cities and neighbourhoods. For those who are able to reside,

remain or enter neighbourhoods targeted for intervention, there is the prospect, as evidenced

here, that such spaces may experience new forms of market stimulation, as well as social and

cultural regulation that respects and protects primarily homeowners’ rights to private property

and quality of life issues- but also which tangentially operate to enhance the urban

experiences of other groups, such as those who benefit from environmental and civic

improvements and new employment opportunities. Here, the relative lack of housing demand

34

and the excess supply of surplus land means there are possibilities for new formal community

resources- parks, urban gardens, shared amenities- determined by use- rather than exchange-

values. However, for more impoverished residents and spaces this seems an unlikely and

even unimaginable outcome. What the case presented here suggests is that implicated in the

“rightsizing” of cities and neighbourhoods, is also a rescaling of urban citizenship, that

excludes as Hackworth (2015) states- the “mortally wounded”.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Manual Aalbers and Matthias Bernt for putting together this

special issue and for their advice on the paper. Thanks also to Joshua Akers and the four

anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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42

1 Selected Housing Characteristics: 2006-2010 American Community Survey Five-Year Estimates. 2 Selected Economic Characteristics: 2006-2010, American Community Survey Five-Year Estimates. 3 Food Stamps/SNAP: 2005-2009 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates4 Households and Families: 2006-2010 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates; Households and Families: 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates5 Financial Characteristics: 2006-2010 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates; Financial Characteristics: 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. 6 Detailed Race: Universe: Total population, 2006-2010 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates; Detailed Race: Universe: Total population, 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates

Neighborhood and type

Size of black or African-American population

Unemployment rate (16 years and above)

Families below poverty level

Vacant housing units

Median est. value of owner-occupied units

Median household income for previous 12 months

Oak Hill(weak)

81.1% 42.7% 54% 20.8% $26,100 $11,748

Idora (transitional)

81.6% 21.8% 22.4% 19.9% $52,500 $21,500

Brownlee Woods(stable)

0% 12.4% 1.4% 13.8% $63,400 $33,086

City of Youngstown

44.1% 16.2% 26.6% 18.7% $52,900 $25,002

(fig 1. comparison of Idora relative to different neighborhood types and citywide indicators, based on American community Survey, 2005-2009, five year estimates)

Fig 2. Map of Idora neighborhood, reprinted with permission of Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation. A color version of this map is available online