The phenomenon of urban population shrinkage is not new and has been previously addressed with a degree of success.

Richmond, Virginia, faced a similar issue in the early 2000s when many people moved out to the suburbs. They addressed it through a public–private joint initiative known as Neighborhoods in Bloom, which identified areas with declining infrastructure and offered cash to homeowners to maintain their properties and helped fund new construction. This targeted initiative led to increased private investment and tax revenue, and local residents reported feeling a stronger sense of community and greater connection to one another.

“There’s a good feeling in the neighborhood now. Our new neighbor helps my husband in the yard… Neighbors caring about each other… we’re getting it back,” says Louise Cain, a Richmond community leader.

Around that time, the German Federal Cultural Foundation launched the Shrinking Cities Project, a federally funded research initiative that observed and documented how four global cities were adapting to smaller populations. Locations the sociologists observed included Detroit, Leipzig (Germany), Liverpool, and Ivanovo (Russia), which were each facing economic and population declines. Civic initiatives included turning abandoned spaces into community gardens and parks and drawing on the heritage of historic neighborhoods to design arts and cultural events and monuments.

The Shrinking Cities researchers concluded that cities did not always need to grow in population to be successful and that many smaller, urban areas could reinvent themselves to still offer culture and a decent standard of living. Dr. Karina Pallagst, a professor at UC Berkeley, hosted a symposium on the topic in 2007 that brought in speakers from locations as diverse as Paris and the Taebaek Mountains region of South Korea, each of whom described how their areas had developed successful strategies to address economically driven population decline.

Civic leaders and urban planners are currently drawing on this past research to develop innovative strategies to revitalize the world’s downtowns today.

The nonprofit Strong Towns Institute, a think tank exploring ways to help cities weather the pandemic’s lingering effects, highlights how Montreal encouraged people to congregate, shop, and work outdoors by providing “parklets” equipped with plants, seating, and Wi-Fi. They advocate for the construction of public downtown spaces that foster interaction outside of offices and the foot traffic required to give residents and visitors the perception of safety.

Additionally, they have found that cities that sponsor a series of regular monthly or weekly cultural events have even greater success in attracting people back downtown than those investing in one-time festivals.

Strong Towns and others advocate longer-term strategies involving land use.

Sheba Ross, Partner and Global Practice Director of the Cities and Communities Practice of the Urban Land Institute, pointed out in late 2024 that this often involves rethinking how to use less-occupied office space and the land near it.

“One major obstacle is that many downtown buildings are designed for limited hours of use each day. We need to find ways to activate these spaces year-round, ensuring they remain safe and enjoyable even without events… We must consider how to transform wide, car-centric roads into more human-friendly spaces that can accommodate light rail, bike paths, and spillover activities from local businesses.”

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Savannah, Georgia, have turned unused office buildings and historic, abandoned factories into art galleries and mixed-use developments for living, working, and shopping. In California, east of San Francisco (SF), neighborhoods are building more parks and green space. For example, thanks in part to the advocacy of cycling organizations, the East Bay Greenway will soon connect several transit stations with a 30-mile urban bike trail.

New investments in public transit, as shown in Munich, Germany and Bogota, Colombia, have made downtowns more accessible and helped to bring people back to the area even when they’re not commuting for work.

In the SF Bay Area, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train system has implemented significant changes to encourage people to continue using transit to commute into cities, where parking remains limited. These include hiring more security personnel to ride and monitor trains, deep cleaning the trains, and using newer, smoother train cars. BART has also conducted public relations outreach in communities to improve its image, including a “fashion show” where designers crafted outfits from old tickets, a BART book club, and a 90-minute, special-themed ride celebrating Star Wars.

Most programs for navigating current urban demographic changes bearing fruit involve public–private–community partnerships. Different levels of government collaborate with the business sector and nonprofit groups to develop new city amenities or stimulate reinvestment in downtown areas and local culture.

The SF Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association advocates for these types of partnerships to accomplish ambitious goals, such as turning disused malls into multi-use community hubs. They support economic incentives for businesses and housing developers to rebuild in downtown SF and Oakland. More housing downtown would lead to less separation between where people live and where they work, making urban downtowns less vulnerable to demographic transitions.

Additionally, they, along with other public experts, remain optimistic that the SF Bay Area’s downtown urban areas are resilient and can be revitalized through reimagining them.

“Cities’ responses to social transformations have often sparked a renaissance and new growth and new centers of activity,” says Dr. Sandra Wachter, co-director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. “These are early times. We’re not in the middle of the story, let alone the end of the story, in terms of how cities are responding and how technology will affect the underlying opportunities that cities have.”