Strategies for shrinking cities on the example of Bytom

The project is an answer to multiple problems present in shrinking cities. As an example of one of them, I wanted to invent a strategy of „controlled” shrinking. From a masterplan to a detail, I developed a radical spatial transformation basing on an assumption, that the fewer inhabitants the city has, the smaller area it should occupy.

The design demands have been implemented in three scales - macro, mezo and micro.\nIn the macro scale I propose strategical solutions. I suggest displacement of people living in the most degraded districts, and moving them to the historical city centre. That gives two sorts of a landscape - densified central district and an abandoned settlement with semi-demolished houses turned into community gardens. Second of my proposals is strengthening a naturally formed green belt surrounding central districts, which would lead through the demolished subdivisions.\nIn mezo scale I’m showing changes in both sorts of regions appearing the city - a demolished district Karb, and densified Old Town. For the first one I have selected buildings to dismantle and turn into the community gardens, and for the second one I have listed gaps in the inner-city structure, which can be built-up.\nIn micro scale I designed one exemplary object per each of regions shown in the mezo scale. For the post-urban part of the city I design a community garden among the leftover walls of one of the demolished houses. For the compact inner-city I design an „urban Basilica”, dedicated to the people relocated to the downtown. The building is constructed with application of the materials coming from the demolition. It becomes not only a monument of vanishing districts, but only an identity input for people trying to adopt to new living conditions. In an urban context basilica divides the old town market square, on which it is going to be build, into two smaller piazzas - one with the church, second with the fountain. In fact, the building is going to reconstruct the quarter which has been destroyed during the II World War.\nI don’t believe that the shrinking process can be stopped. However, I believe, that this diverse scale of intervention, preceded by a complex debate about the future of the city, is an opportunity for the community to become more independent, to strengthen its identity, spatial consolidation (destroyed by decades of robbery mining), and finally, to lower expenses needed for infrastructure to be maintained.