Places can be compared, but there are always differences

Even so, as I say, all places are unique, but rarely are their circumstances so special that communities cannot be compared.
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But I forgot to write while there are always differences, that doesn't make the comparisons invalid, nor does it mean that you can't make inferences.
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The New Orleans Times-Picayune is running a series on what my friend Drew Ronneberg (chair of the ANC6A Economic Development and Zoning Committee) calls "planning for contraction." Such planning typifies what the rustbelt should be doing. Youngstown, Ohio pioneered this with the Youngstown 2010 project. For a time, although the Mayor who initiated it was not re-elected, so did Niagara Falls, New York, which is much less successful compared to Niagara Falls, Ontario, but more like most cities--declining--in upstate New York. (There is also the European Shrinking Cities project.)

See "It's time for New Orleans to admit it's a shrinking city, some say" and "Faded Midwestern cities offer ways New Orleans could slim down to match its smaller population"

DAVID GRUNFELD / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE. A rebuilt home sits like an island among empty lots on Warrington Drive in Gentilly. The city's gap-toothed recovery raises questions about where New Olreans should invest its increasingly limited resources.

The Dallas Morning News has an interesting article, "DeSoto, Duncanville become involved in 'new urbanism'," about how smaller places with "no there there" are building town centers. In our area, Rockville has done this recently and it is finally successful after a previous unsuccessful iteration and of course, you can argue the same for Silver Spring--there was there there, but it was tarnished, so they went about purposefully revitalizing the community. Maybe they didn't do it the way I would have, but they did it, and Downtown Silver Spring is fundamentally a different place today than it was 10 years ago--in a good way, basically.

I find this interesting because parts of DC are growing and have the potential to add population, but this faces what one might call "nimbyism"--not in my backyard attitudes. Some of this is at times justifiable, but at other times I would argue that it fails to recognize the temporal aspects of city-building and that DC cannot remain static while other communities within the region grow, change, innovate, improve... or decline.

DC is not necessarily a declining city anymore. But many neighborhoods are acting in ways that likely will make it a declining city in relative terms. As Marc Brookman says in an interview, "He zones in on 'smart growth'" in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Q: What are the usual areas of concern about these [mixed use, denser] developments?

A: Increasing density, allowing for the mixture of uses within the same site, and the perception that as a result of increased intensity of the use of the land that it will create adverse impacts.

Q: What does the alliance say in response? Why should municipalities consider this type of development?

A: Because it maximizes the investment in existing infrastructure, reduces the amount of environmental degradation that otherwise would occur if more land was disturbed to accommodate the same amount of people, and it creates a sense of place where individuals can live, work and shop without making long trips in automobiles. And it's a much more efficient use of the land than individual large-lot communities.

New Orleans Times-Picayune graphic.