decline

According to Shrinking Cities, Liverpool and Manchester, UK have experienced shrinkage due to a state of deindustrialization; previously they were two of the most industrial cities in the world. When put into one of the categories of a shrinking city defined by the research study (suburbanization, post-socialism, deindustrialization, or a combination), it seems that New Orleans' conditions fit well into the category of deindustrialization; in this post, Liverpool will be the focus for purposes of comparison.

Liverpool for two hundred years was a maritime center for commerce; in the 1930s began the decline of the textile industry which then affected the port-related industries; the population now is half that of 1930. The biggest decline in the port industry occurred post-WWII, when the unskilled labor population (mostly Irish) lost jobs with the fall of the economy and moved elsewhere. The decline of the ports resulted in NOLA's decline.



In the 1990s, the poorest districts of Liverpool had an unemployment rate of 44 percent (similar to that of the poorer districts of NOLA in the 1990's). Half of the households in these areas rely on social welfare programs. Between the '30s and the '50s a ring of welfare-funded housing was erected surrounding the city and the priority became bulldozing the slums of the city as the population declined; by the '70s the economy had nearly entirely collapsed and the city became empty as laborers had fled.


by "deprivation" they mean "employment deprivation," or "unemployment."

By the end of the cities, some districts in the inner city experienced 90 percent unemployment. The Liverpool City Council went bankrupt. The inner city had been full of multi-family housing; they were bull-dozed and replaced with single-family housing, causing considerable shrinkage. Due to the decline of industry, the inner city became a suburb.

Today, the European Union, supports Liverpool like many British port cities.

Pre-Katrina NOLA was a situation falling into this pattern; the decline of the port industry, the flight of the population outward from the city, abandoned buildings. The slums were not being demolished, though; the unemployment rates never reached the most extreme of Liverpool, even now; unskilled labor remained in the city. Despite these differences, was NOLA on a path similar to Liverpool?

The next series of posts are going to examine the effects of Katrina on industry in an extensive amount of detail. With that information, I will study cities that have undergone disasters or destruction which have had similar situations as Katrina and examine their population changes, employment differences, effects on industry and effects on housing and how they have dealt with these changes.


All images and information courtesy of the Shrinking Cities project.