--------------------------------------------------------------------------------SHRINKING CITIES-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Content
Introduction									The Shrinking Cities ProjectInternational tour
Shrinking Cities at Cranbrook and MOCAD

p. 2

Cranbrook Art Museum								Exhibition 1 – International Research
Investigated regions

p. 5

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD)				
Exhibition 2 – Interventions
Concepts of action

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Shrinking Cities publications							p. 10Contact										p. 11

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Introduction-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Since the beginning of the industrial age approximately 200 years ago, populations, economies, cities, and prosperity have been growing nearly continuously,
and mostly at a rapid pace. Growth seems to become a matter of course. Thishistoric epoch is drawing to a close. The populations of old industrial nations
such as Italy, Germany, Japan, and Russia are beginning to grow smaller, and theprocess of urbanization has reached its zenith and is declining. Between 1950
and 2000, more than 350 large cities across the globe, including over 60 in the
United States, lost a significant share of their inhabitants and economic activity.
Shrinkage leads, as expansion once did, to fundamental shocks, which result insocietal reorientation through changes in visions, modes of action, and methods.
The phenomenon of urban shrinkage is based on several transformation processes.
Four representative urban regions have been chosen for this investigation, andeach has its own specific cause of shrinkage: Here in Detroit, the cause has
been suburbanization; in the textile region of Ivanovo, Russian Federation it ispost-socialist change; in the region of Manchester/Liverpool, United Kingdom it
is deindustrialization; while in the Halle/Leipzig, Germany region it is a combination of all three of these factors.
What do we do with cities that are contracting? Is shrinkage necessarily bad?
Can it be managed in a way that helps to shape a dynamic new city? Shrinking
cities call existing urban models, social practices, and values into question,and thus call for fundamental cultural reflection and reevaluation. In dealing
with shrinking cities, classic urban design and city planning come up against
their limits. Can differences take a positive turn instead of fostering social
polarization? Is urbanism conceivable without density? Can slowness itself represent quality? What role does property play in the use of space? Can unused
spaces and materials be used in different ways? Are there informal practices
that can be read as positive models for action? How do mentalities and identity
crises influence urban space?
The Shrinking Cities Project
Since 2002, “Shrinking Cities” - a project of the German Federal Cultural Foundation[Kulturstiftung des Bundes] - has investigated the worldwide phenomenon of urban
shrinkage focusing four urban regions: Detroit (USA), Halle/Leipzig (Germany),
Manchester/Liverpool (Britain), and Ivanovo (Russia). In a second phase of the
project, ideas for alternative models of action and intervention were developed.
A network of more than 200 artists, architects, academics and local initiatives
participated in four years of investigations. The results of the project (2002–
2006) were first presented in exhibitions at the KW Institute for Contemporary
Art, Berlin (fall 2004); the Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst (ZfzK), HalleNeustadt; and the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig (Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig; winter 2005/06). Several books and digital publications havebeen published. Recently, the Shrinking Cities exhibition is shown in New York,Tokyo and Detroit.
International tour
Between the fall of 2006 and the summer of 2008, the Shrinking Cities project
presents its work at several venues. International venues include: Biennale diVenezia, Italy, 2006; Pratt Manhattan Gallery and Van Alen Institute, New York,
2006; University of Tokyo with AkiDeCo Museum, Japan, 2007; E-Werk, Saarbrücken,
Germany, 2007; Dortmund, Ruhr Valley, Germany, 2007; German Architecture Museum(DAM) Frankfurt, Germany, 2007/2008; Pro Arte Institute, in cooperation with theState Museum of History St. Petersburg, Russia, 2008.
The international tour is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation[Kulturstiftung des Bundes].

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Shrinking Cities Exhibition at Cranbrook Art Museum & the Museum of Contemporary
Art Detroit (MOCAD)
February 3 - April 1, 2007
This two-part exhibition analyzes the problems and then offers imaginative actions for regions that have undergone decline by intro-ducing projects by morethan 200 artists, architects, filmmakers, academics and international teams fromover twelve countries, including twenty artists based in Michigan. The goal of
the exhibition is to conceptually and physically unite the city and the suburbs
in this dialogue about new urban models. The presentation of Shrinking Cities inMichigan is a collaboration between Cranbrook Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).
Cranbrook Art Museum hosts part one of the exhibition, Shrinking Cities, International Research, which examines the phenomenon of urban decline in four city
regions: Detroit, USA, Halle/Leipzig, Germany, Manchester/Liverpool, United
Kingdom, and Ivanovo, Russia.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) host part two of the exhibition,
Shrinking Cities: Interventions. This part is divided into five areas: Negotiating
Inequality, Self-Governance, Creating Images, Organizing Retreat, and Occupying
Space. Commissioned projects range from artistic interventions and self-empowerment
strategies to new legal regulations and utopian visions.
Cranbrook Art Museum		4454 Woodward Avenue
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303
Phone: 248-645-3323
www.cranbrook.edu
Wednesday - Sunday: 11 am — 5 pm
Fourth Fridays: 11 am – 9 pm
Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD)
39221 Woodward Avenue
Detroit, MI 48201	
Phone: 313-832-6622
www.mocadetroit.org
Thursday - Saturday: 12 – 8 pm
Wednesday and Sunday: 12 – 6 pm
Opening Reception: Shrinking Cities
Friday, February 2
6 — 9 pm, Cranbrook Art Museum and MOCAD
9 pm—12 midnite, Music at MOCAD: Odu Afrobeat and Human Eye$10 cover charge-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Take the Bus: Shrinking Cities Shuttle Bus
A free bus will run every Saturday and Sunday between Cranbrook Art Museum and
MOCAD for the duration of Shrinking Cities to provide easy access for the museums’
visitors to this two-part exhibition.
Shrinking City Bus Schedule:
Saturdays and Sundays, February 3 - April 1
Cranbrook to MOCAD: 12 pm, 1:30 pm, and 3 pm.
MOCAD to Cranbrook: 12:45 pm, 2:15 pm, and 3:45 pm
Additional service on February 23---  ---

Chief Curator: Philipp Oswalt, Berlin
Project Directors, Cranbrook Art Museum: Gregory Wittkopp, Brian Young, Roberta
Frey Gilboe, and Abigail Newbold
Project Directors, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD): Marsha Miro,
Mitch Cope, and Jeseca Dawson
Assistant Curators: Anita Kaspar, with Anke Hagemann, Berlin
Program Coordinators: Mitch Cope, Gregory Tom, and Elena Ivanova
Exhibition Design: meyer voggenreiter projekte, and Sebastian Hauser, Cologne
Exhibition Graphic Design: Tanja Wesse and 1kilo, Berlin
Project Management, Project Office Philipp Oswalt, Berlin: Peter Boragno, Anita
Kaspar, Nicole Minten-Jung, and Anke Hagemann, with Giovanni Piovene
Public Relations: Astrid Herbold, Berlin, and Felicia E. Molnar, Cranbrook
Curatorial Team: Nikolaus Kuhnert (archplus magazine, Berlin), Kyong Park
(International Center for Urban Ecology, Detroit), Walter Prigge (Bauhaus Dessau
Foundation), Barbara Steiner (Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig) / Local Curatorsof the Exhibition Part 1, International Research: DETROIT: Mitch Cope (artist /curator, Detroit), Kyong Park (artist / curator, New York) with DCDC / Dan Pitera(architect, Detroit); IVANOVO: Sergei Sitar (architect / publisher, Moscow),
Alexander Sverdlov (architect, Moscow / Rotterdam); MANCHESTER/LIVERPOOL: Joshua
Bolchover (architect, Manchester), Paul Domela (curator, Liverpool), Philipp
Misselwitz (architect, Berlin)

Shrinking Cities is presented at Cranbrook through the support of the Museum
Committee of Cranbrook Art Museum; the members and fundraising activities of
ArtMembers@Cranbrook; contributors to the Annual Fund of Cranbrook Academy of
Art and Art Museum; and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs.
Cranbrook Art Museum’s 2006–2007 Exhibition Season is sponsored by LaSalle Bank.
Free admission for all visitors and tour groups to Cranbrook Art Museum during
the Shrinking Cities exhibition is sponsored by MASCO.

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Cranbrook Art Museum-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Exhibition 1 – International Research
Cranbrook Art Museum will host part one of the exhibition, Shrinking Cities,
International Research, which examines the phenomenon of urban decline. The four
focus cities Halle/Leipzig, Manchester/Liverpool, Detroit and Ivanovo are explored and represented in diverse forms of documentation by artists, architects,
filmmakers, journalists, and researchers. Themes include a worldwide study ofshrinking cities, the change of urban landscapes, everyday practices, and political conflicts under the conditions of urban decline.
The topics range from neglect and the appropriation of spaces through changed
forms of work to the development of innovative subcultures and criticism of
existing planning cultures. The resulting cross-references, which reveal what iscommon to shrinking cities as well as their individual characteristics, placed
regional practices in the course of urban shrinkage within a superordinatedcontext and emphasized that urban shrinkage is a global problem and an opportunity for cultural renewal.

Investigated Regions-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Suburbanization: Detroit (Michigan, USA)
Population loss: –51% (1950–2004)
Detroit is a moving city: As the city of Detroit is shrinking, metropolitan
Detroit is expanding. Detroit is a city founded on the concept of mobility, butmobility is also its downfall. Racism was one of the driving forces for theshrinkage of the city. The constant growth away from the city has fragmented theregion into black and white, rich and poor, urban and sub­urban, resulting in oneof the most segregated cities in the United States.
Detroit became the icon of the failure of the modern metropolis in the American
consciousness, and thereby a projection screen for the apocalyptic fantasies ofmass media and pop cultures. Recently, there is renewed development in Detroit’s
city center with new casinos, sports arenas, restaurants, night clubs, strip
joints, chain stores, expensive condominiums and lofts, catering to suburbanites
while the surrounding neighborhoods are still being bulldozed and forgotten andtens of thousands still leave the city each year. Those fleeing Detroit regard
their city as an undesirable and dangerous place, beyond repair. Those who livein Detroit have discovered the art of survival, building a culture isolated fromthe mainstream, creating a unique way of living and a new kind of city. Ironically, this same isolated ingenuity and creativity has significantly influenced
and enriched international popular culture.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Deindustrialization: Manchester/Liverpool (North West, UK)
Population loss: –44.9% Manchester (1930–2002)
Population loss: –48.5% Liverpool (1930–2002)
After decades of decline, Manchester and Liverpool have become known in the last
10 to 15 years as prime examples of successful regeneration. With their prestige
projects, ­re-invigorated city cores and ever increasing house prices, both cities
should be inspirational for any shrinking city that turn-around is still possible.
This remarkable transformation in Liverpool and Manchester was initiated throughthe emergence of a new musical subculture that made use of vacant buildings. The
cities' image shifted from being depressed post-industrial towns to being citiesof culture at the cutting edge of urban cool. Both city administrations and---  ---

savvy developers opportunistically took a proactive role in using this potential
to instigate public-private partnerships that created a feverish rate of building
projects in and around the core of each city. As well as this process of redefinition, the de-industrialization of the region gave rise to new post-Fordiantypes of employment such as the call centre industry, which is typified by insecurity, over-flexibility and low pay. A heightening of social tension within
inner neighborhoods has resulted in an increased desire for security. Muchattention is paid to defensibility when designing new residential developments,and existing buildings are equipped with entire arsenals of security devices.
This discrepancy between the branded image of the city and more local conditions
reveals that the current status of each city remains fragile; the revitalizationof the city core has been accompanied by a continuing crisis in the outer innercity areas that are characterized by high unemployment, abandonment, and continued
population loss. Areas of growth lie adjacent to areas of intense deprivation –unfortunately the often promised “trickle down effect” has simply not occurred.
To this extent the urban landscape of both these cities and the region itself ispolarized; success and failure lie side by side.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Peripherization: Halle/Leipzig (Saxony-Anhalt / Saxony, Germany)
Population loss: –25.4% Halle (1989–2003)
Population loss: –17.6% Leipzig (1989–2003)
After the German reunification in 1990 a dramatic shrinkage of the populationin eastern German cities occurred. The rapid de-industrialization of eastern
Germany, which was not just due to the poor condition of facilities, but had
also to do with serious economic policy mistakes and western German influenceand interests, led to long-term unemployment of 20 percent. In view of the poor
prospects at hand more than one million people moved to the old (West German)
federal states. Massive, publicly funded suburbanization policies led to anincreased thinning out of the cities, which already had 350,000 vacant flats inold buildings before the wall came down. There are now 1.3 million vacant flats
and the prognosis for 2030 puts the number at two million. By 2050 the population of eastern Germany could be half of what it once was.
In spite of the trillions of marks and euros in subsidies, the promised Aufschwung Ost (Eastern Recovery) never occurred. The funds did little more thanbuy a period of social peace, which is now quite fragile due to the current
economic austerity measures. After a phase of general urban shrinkage, relative
winners and losers have developed in the past few years: While several cities
such as Leipzig, Jena and Weimar were able to be stabilized, former mono-industrial areas such as Bitterfeld-Wolfen and Hoyerswerda and the peripheral rural
regions in the north and along the Polish border find themselves in an unrestrained period of decline. The gulf in the standards of living between eastern
and western Germany continues to grow. The new federal states are turning into
the economic periphery of the prosperous economic areas in western and southern
Germany.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Postsocialism: Ivanovo (Ivanovo Oblast, Russian Federation)
Population loss: –6.8% (1990–2002)
In the textile region northeast of Moscow the economic structures collapsed withthe end of socialism and the Soviet Union, and the industrial production sank toa fifth of what it was. The number of births fell dramatically since 1989 andlife expectancy declined significantly. Particularly young people with a better
education left Ivanovo in search of work.
The project of Soviet modernization and urbanization of the territory remained
incomplete. Small communities still exist today without basic infrastructure,and large construction projects were abandoned. Central planning has been
replaced by small architectural undertakings of individual interventions.

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Here globalization is a synonym for the ruptures in the economic network andinternationalism, and for the decline in technology and in the modern divisionof labor. Machines were dismantled, the airport was closed. The city life adapted
itself to the rhythms of agrarian production cycles, since many city residents
were forced to revert to subsistence farming on the lots of their dachas orgardens. Pre-modern and post-industrial practices overlap and develop new lifestyles.
The ideology of the collective identities of factory and party has been eroded.
It has been replaced by the flood of information through globalization, a universal individualization and a cultural cosmopolitism of Barbie, Nike, and CocaCola. At the same time, local traditions are being called upon to bolster identity.
With the de-industrialization, the factory lost its central function in culturaland public life – no comparable structures have been developed. The modern regimeof factory labor has yielded to a postmodern patchwork of individual arrangements
and initiatives on the basis of a finely woven social network.

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Exhibition 2 – Interventions
Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) will host part two of the exhibition,
Shrinking Cities, Interventions, which presents strategies for action. It is
divided into five areas: “Negotiating Inequality”, “Self-Governance”, “Creating
Images”, “Organizing Retreat”, and “Occupying Space”. Commissioned projects range
from artistic interventions and self-empowerment strategies through architectural,
landscape, media and performance interventions, to new legal regulations and utopian
visions.
To initiate strategies for action, the architectural magazine "archplus" staged
an idea competition, while the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation made direct commissions
and the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig awarded artists grants. The majorityof the projects were developed in close cooperation with citizens, local groups,
and institutions.

Concepts of action-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Negotiating Inequality
Social ideals and images of space in the Modern period bore the stamp of equality.
Equal opportunities regarding living standards are to this day the proclaimed
aim of federal republican regional planning policies in Germany. Yet until thispoint, with the onset of shrinking processes, it has become clear that spatial
equality is no longer a realistic target. On the contrary: the negotiation of
inequality is today on the political and social agendas. To what extent canspatial inequality be productively conceived? What chances for experimentation
does it offer? Does inequality offer scope for diversity or are social divisions
inherent in it?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Self-GovernanceThe crises of state organization and economic development have put inhabitants’
self-organization in the spotlight. They are expected to take the matter of
economic, social, cultural and urban developments in hand. Cutbacks in the welfare
state and the deterioration of public infrastructure and social services are
generally accompanied by the notion that society’s responsibility for equal
opportunities and support should fall on the individual citizen who, however,is provided neither with the necessary resources nor the authority to make decisions. The other side of the coin is that the “gaps” made available by state
withdrawal offer possibilities in shrinking cities for the development of socialand cultural initiatives of a liberationist nature, which can give rise to
viable, socially integrative and culturally ambitious activities.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Creating Images
In today’s media dominated society, a city’s image plays as essential a role as
do the so-called “hard-tools”, namely economics and planning. Images mold perceptions of a city, be these the insider perspective of its inhabitants or theviews held by people from elsewhere. Precise marketing budgets, cliché-ridden
reports in the media, artistic image production or personal memories are only a
few amongst the many cornerstones on which an overall image is constructed,
negotiated and discussed. Shrinking cities in particular endeavor to overcome
the negative effects of urban crisis on their reputation by investing heavily
in creating a positive image; and by either strengthening or inventing local
highlights in order to boost their economic, social or cultural standing.
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Organizing Retreat
Shrinking means the dissolution and degeneration of traditional urban structures.
It is impossible to completely halt these processes. The task of architects andurban planners is thus restricted to regulating and elaborating these processes.
They are faced, in this regard, with a wholly new task for which nothing intheir previous experience has prepared them. Dealing with the demands of architecture and infrastructure in shrinking cities thus requires architects andurban planners to remain open, both to new methods and experiments and to innovative ideas about what a city and its planning can be.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Occupying Space
The capitalist logic of extracting the optimal surplus value from everythingruns up against a wall in shrinking cities. Foreclosure sales and bankruptcy are
the order of the day, private investors few and far between. The spatial vacuum
and its attendant weak economy demand new financing and trade concepts. Usualmodes of utilization must be extended to include temporary, ephemeral, nonbureaucratic and self-organized models that both exploit the potential of thespace available in shrinking cities and give local protagonists the chance totake on disused land or property and use these in unconventional ways.

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Shrinking Cities Publications-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Shrinking Cities, Volume 1: International Research
Ed. Philipp Oswalt, 736 pages, more than 500 illustrations (most in color)
Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2005
ISBN-13 9783775716826, $ 55
Citing concrete examples from Manchester and Liverpool in Great Britain, Detroit
in the United States, Ivanovo in Russia, and Halle and Leipzig in Germany, thisvolume compares living conditions and cultural change in shrinking urban regions.
Artistic intercessions help sensitize the public to a global phenomenon thatposes a new social challenge. (Essays by Robert Fishman, Linda Grant, Dave Haslam,Susanne Hauser, Klaus Müller, Klaus Ronneberger, Thomas J. Sugrue, Kevin Ward,and many more. Photos by Stan Douglas, John Ganis, Ken Grant, Bas Princen, Tom
Wood, and many more.)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Shrinking Cities, Volume 2: Interventions
Ed. Philipp Oswalt, 864 pages, more than 450 illustrations (most in color)
Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2006
ISBN-13 9783775717113, $ 55
This book provides an international overview and critical discussion of concepts
and strategies for shrinking cities from the fields of architecture, landscapedesign, urban planning, the media, performance, and art. The approaches discussed
range from artistic responses and selfempowerment projects to architectural andlandscape interventions, strategies of media communication, and city marketing,to new legal regulations and utopian designs. A series of essays critically
discusses current projects in North America, Europe, and Japan, as well as
important historical positions in architecture and art. (Essays by Ash Amin,
Regina Bittner, Wolfgang Engler, Robert Fishman, Dan Graham, David Harvey,
Juan Herreros, Bart Lootsma, and many more. Projects by Will Alsop, Ruedi Baur,
Florian Beigel, Chaos Computer Club, Crimson, Jeremy Deller, M. J. Ginzburg,
Gordon MattaClark, muf, Hidetoshi Ohno, OMA, Cedric Price, Andreas Siekmann,
Robert Smithson, Superflex, Oswald Mathias Ungers, and many more.)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Atlas of Shrinking Cities
Ed. Philipp Oswalt and Tim Rieniets, 160 pages, with numerous color maps,
English/Germany
Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2006
ISBN-13 9783775717144, $ 55
Which cities shrink? Where are these cities? What processes lie behind shrinkage?
Atlas of Shrinking Cities has approximately 30 world maps, 50 diagrams, 40 city
portraits, 15 lexical essays, and an index of cities to document this global
phenomenon and make it comprehensible visually by means of an innovative graphic
presentation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------In addition, the digital publications Shrinking Cities—Complete Works Vols. 1 + 2,
which include numerous film and audio contributions and extensive researchmaterial, are available from Arch+ Verlag Aachen. www.archplus.net.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Contact-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Detroit:
Felicia E. Molnar
Public Relations Director
Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum
PO Box 801
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303.0801
Phone: 248.645.3329
Fax: 248.646.0046
FMolnar@cranbrook.edu
www.cranbrook.edu

Jessica Dawson
Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit
4454 Woodward Avenue
Detroit, MI 48201
Phone: 313.832.6622
Fax: 313.832.4665
jdawson@mocadetroit.org
www.mocadetroit.org-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Germany:
Dr. Astrid Herbold
Schrumpfende Städte - Shrinking Cities
Eisenacher Straße 74
D-10823 Berlin
Phone: +49 (30) 81 82 19-06
press@shrinkingcities.com
www.shrinkingcities.com-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Shrinking Cities is an initiative project of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German
Federal Cultural Foundation) in cooperation with the Project Office Philipp
Oswalt, the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundationand the magazine archplus.
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