The Medium-Sized City Paradox: Why Urban Shrinkage Might Not Be All Bad
$27,000. That's the average cost savings per resident when a medium-sized city "right-sizes" its infrastructure after population decline, according to urban planning estimates. But you won't find that number in most press releases about urban revitalization initiatives.
Let's talk about urban shrinkage - that phenomenon where cities lose population and economic activity. The conventional wisdom says it's a disaster: empty storefronts, abandoned homes, declining tax base. But what if we've been looking at it all wrong?
A new study from Jeonbuk National University researchers examining trends and factors of urban shrinkage in medium-sized cities suggests there might be another side to this story. While the researchers don't explicitly celebrate urban decline, their analysis of these patterns opens up an interesting question: What if shrinkage isn't just a problem to solve, but a transition to manage?
The Unit Economics of Urban Decline
Here's the thing about cities: they're businesses too. They have revenue (taxes), expenses (services), and customers (residents). When a city loses population, the conventional response is panic - followed by expensive growth initiatives that often don't deliver.
But what's the actual business model of a medium-sized city? And what happens when that model breaks?
The Jeonbuk National University study examines these trends in medium-sized cities, which face unique challenges compared to major metropolitan areas. These cities don't have the gravitational pull of a New York or Tokyo, nor the specialized focus of a small town. They're caught in the middle, and that position is increasingly precarious.
What the research doesn't highlight (but should) is the retention problem. Cities aren't just failing to attract new residents - they're failing to keep the ones they have. It's the leaky bucket problem of urban planning. And pumping more water into a leaky bucket has never been a winning strategy.
Who's Actually Paying?
The question nobody wants to ask about urban revitalization: Who's footing the bill? And are they getting their money's worth?
When medium-sized cities launch ambitious growth initiatives, the costs often fall on existing residents and businesses through increased taxes or diverted resources. The promise is that these investments will pay off through future growth. But what if that growth never materializes?
The Jeonbuk research provides an opportunity to reconsider this approach. Rather than pouring resources into chasing growth that may never come, what if cities embraced their current size and focused on becoming better rather than bigger?
I've seen this movie before. In 2015, it was called "The Innovation District." In 2018, it was "Smart City Initiatives." Now it's "Post-Pandemic Revitalization." The names change, but the playbook remains the same: expensive infrastructure projects, tax incentives for businesses, and marketing campaigns that promise a renaissance just around the corner.
But the retention numbers tell a different story. People aren't leaving medium-sized cities because there aren't enough innovation hubs or smart streetlights. They're leaving because of fundamental economic and quality-of-life issues that these initiatives rarely address.
The Moat? Nonexistent.
What's the competitive advantage of a medium-sized city? The pitch deck says "quality of life" and "affordability." But if those were true moats, these cities wouldn't be shrinking in the first place.
The Jeonbuk National University researchers are examining the factors behind urban shrinkage, which suggests these supposed advantages aren't working as advertised. The reality is that most medium-sized cities are competing on the same generic value propositions, with little to differentiate them.
This is where the counter-intuitive opportunity emerges. Instead of competing in a race they're likely to lose, what if these cities embraced their shrinkage and found ways to turn it into an advantage?
What Breaks at 10x Scale?
Urban planners love to talk about scalability - building systems that can accommodate growth. But what about the opposite? What systems work better at a smaller scale?
The Jeonbuk study on urban shrinkage opens up this question. Medium-sized cities that are losing population have an opportunity that growing cities don't: they can experiment with right-sizing their infrastructure and services.
This isn't just about cutting costs. It's about reimagining what a city can be when it's not chasing growth at all costs. Community gardens in vacant lots. Pedestrian-friendly streets where traffic once dominated. Affordable housing in repurposed commercial spaces. These aren't just consolation prizes for decline - they're potential improvements that become possible when a city stops trying to be something it's not.
The Latin American Parallel
Interestingly, the same university that's studying urban shrinkage is also looking at resource governance models that might offer lessons for city management. According to a separate study mentioned in PR Newswire, a Jeonbuk National University researcher has proposed a two-stage decision-making framework for lithium governance in Latin America.
While seemingly unrelated, there's a parallel here. Both studies deal with managing resources in changing environments. Just as Latin American countries are grappling with how to govern their lithium reserves sustainably, medium-sized cities need frameworks for managing their physical, financial, and social resources in an era of population decline.
The lithium governance framework suggests a balanced approach between exploitation and conservation - a concept that could be equally valuable for shrinking cities balancing between revitalization efforts and accepting new realities.
Reality Check: The Boston Contrast
For context, let's look at what's happening in growing markets. The National Real Estate News Roundup covered news from the Boston real estate market, as reported by the Boston Real Estate Times. Boston, unlike the medium-sized cities in the Jeonbuk study, continues to see growth and development.
This contrast is instructive. While Boston grapples with the challenges of growth - affordability crises, infrastructure strain, displacement - shrinking medium-sized cities face the opposite problems. Each context requires different solutions, and what works for Boston won't necessarily work for a medium-sized city experiencing population decline.
The mistake many medium-sized cities make is trying to replicate the Boston model without the Boston fundamentals. It's like trying to run a startup with enterprise processes - the mismatch dooms the effort from the start.
The Business Model That Actually Works
So what does work for shrinking medium-sized cities? The business model is simple: Accept the reality of your size, focus on quality over quantity, and find the right-sized infrastructure and services for your actual population.
The question isn't how to grow, but how to thrive at your current scale. This means:
1. Right-sizing infrastructure instead of maintaining systems built for a larger population
2. Focusing on retention of current residents rather than expensive attraction strategies
3. Converting excess capacity into quality-of-life improvements
4. Building a sustainable fiscal model based on current tax base, not projected growth
This approach isn't sexy. It won't make headlines in the Boston Real Estate Times. But it might actually work, which is more than can be said for many urban revitalization strategies.
The Metric They're Not Highlighting
When cities talk about revitalization, they love to highlight investment dollars, new business openings, and construction projects. What they don't mention is perhaps the most important metric: resident satisfaction.
Are the people who already live in these medium-sized cities happy with their communities? Do they plan to stay? Are their needs being met? These questions get far less attention than economic development statistics, but they're far more predictive of a city's future.
The Jeonbuk National University research into urban shrinkage factors could shed light on these questions, helping cities understand not just why people leave, but what might make them stay.
Why Now?
Urban shrinkage isn't new. Medium-sized cities have been losing population for decades. So why is this research relevant now?
The post-pandemic era has reshaped how people think about where they live and work. Remote work has freed many from geographic constraints. Climate change is making some locations more desirable and others less so. Economic polarization is concentrating wealth in fewer places.
These forces make it even more important for medium-sized cities to find sustainable paths forward that don't rely on growth fantasies. The Jeonbuk research comes at a time when realistic approaches to urban management are more necessary than ever.
The Bottom Line
Urban shrinkage in medium-sized cities, as examined by Jeonbuk National University researchers, isn't necessarily a failure to be reversed. It might be a transition to be managed - and possibly even leveraged.
The cities that will thrive in this environment won't be the ones with the most ambitious growth plans. They'll be the ones that understand their actual value proposition, right-size their operations, and focus on making life better for the residents they already have.
That's not a consolation prize. It's just good business.
