Scholars to consider the shrinking of cities

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Scholars gather at UC Berkeley this week to ponder a trend much-studied in Europe but little-discussed in the United States: the shrinking city.

The phenomenon touches places as varied as Paris; Youngstown, Ohio; Leipzig, Germany; the Taeback Mountain region of South Korea; and parts of the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas, scholars say.

Shrinkage ranges from the cyclical -- one scholar points to San Francisco, Sunnyvale and Daly City after the dot-com bust -- to the devastating, as exemplified by America's Rust Belt and industrial cities in the former East Germany.

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