Neighborhoods, cities, regions and countries face sustained economic and population decline, due to lower population growth rates, deindustrialization and sustained disinvestment, and the housing foreclosure crisis. Planners increasingly see ‘decline’ as something to plan for: a place may lose population while ensuring a high quality of life and enhanced social value (Delken 2008, Hollander 2010). Growth-oriented planning continues to maintain its hegemony over local government decision-making. Can decision models help planners devise strategies that will maximize the social value of managed decline?