Addressing Urban Shrinkage In Small And Medium Sized Towns

The analytical tools and practical examples provided by Schlappa and Nishino are relevant for political and administrative decisionmakers, leaders of civil society and business organisations in developing locally appropriate, creative and robust strategies to shrink smart and re-grow smaller.

This book examines a rapidly emerging new topic in urban settlement patterns: the role of shrinking cities. Much coverage is given to declining fertility rates, ageing populations and economic restructuring as the factors behind shrinking cities, but there is also reference to resource depletion, the demise of single-company towns and the micro-location of environmental hazards. The contributions show that shrinkage can occur at any scale – from neighbourhood to macro-region - and they consider whether shrinkage of metropolitan areas as a whole may be a future trend. Also addressed in this volume is the question of whether urban shrinkage policies are necessary or effective. The book comprises four parts: world or regional issues (with reference to the European Union and Latin America); national case studies (the United States, India, China, Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Romania and Estonia); city case studies (Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Naples, Belfast and Halle); and broad issues such as the environmental consequences of shrinking cities. This book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners working in the fields of urban studies, economic geography and public policy.

Shrinking Cities: Understanding Shrinkage and Decline in the United States offers a contemporary look at patterns of shrinkage and decline in the United States. The book juxtaposes the complex and numerous processes that contribute to these patterns with broader policy frameworks that have been under consideration to address shrinkage in U.S. cities. A range of methods are employed to answer theoretically-grounded questions about patterns of shrinkage and decline, the relationships between the two, and the empirical associations among shrinkage, decline, and several socio-economic variables. In doing so, the book examines new spaces of shrinkage in the United States. The book also explores pro-growth and decline-centered governance, which has important implications for questions of sustainability and resilience in U.S. cities. Finally, the book draws attention to U.S.-wide demographic shifts and argues for further research on socio-economic pathways of various groups of population, contextualized within population trends at various geographic scales. This timely contribution contends that an understanding of what the city has become, as it faces shrinkage, is essential toward a critical analysis of development both within and beyond city boundaries. The book will appeal to urban and regional studies scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, as well as practitioners and policymakers.

This prescient book presents the intellectual terrain of shrinking cities while exploring the key research questions in each of the field’s sub-domains and reviewing the range of methodologies within these topics.

In both countries, France and Germany, there is great pressure to change and adapt towards new forms of urbanity and to conceive new strategic approaches with limited public finance and a need for economic efficiency. Not all types of urban areas are equally affected by these issues. The book aims to do justice to this situation, considering in both cases the context of the national urban systems. As it proved impossible to address all the topics relevant to the spatial development of urban and rural areas, the authors decided to concentrate on a number of important topical themes which are undoubtedly relevant in both countries, albeit in different ways, and which could be significant for a comparison. The focus is thus on issues related to metropolises, small and medium-sized towns and particularly current issues of urbanity, sustainability, Smart Cities, transport and mobility, and the role of cross-border urban development. The structure of the chapters is conceived in these terms. Besides scientific and theoretical approaches, the authors also consider the practical planning perspective and methodological aspects of the topic at hand. They mainly address three relevant factors: the differences between the two institutional systems, the development paths and historical constants, and how new challenges are addressed on both sides of the border.

More and more places across the world are confronted with demographic shrinkage. This edited volume discusses how local communities in city and countryside have responded to the challenge of population decline. It is argued that formal strategies based on political and public sector decisions are only one way to deal with shrinkage. Informal adaptation strategies developed by civil society play an important role as well. To illustrate this, the book brings together a variety of theoretical perspectives, case studies and policy lessons from both urban and rural areas. Gert-Jan Hospers is researcher at the University of Twente and Radboud University, the Netherlands. Josefina Syssner is researcher at the Centre for Municipality Studies at Linkoeping University, Sweden.

Compelling and engaging, this Handbook on Shrinking Cities addresses the fundamentals of shrinkage, exploring its causal factors, the ways in which planning strategies and policies are steered, and innovative solutions for revitalising shrinking cities. Chapters cover topics of governance, ‘greening’ and ‘right-sizing’, and regrowth, laying the relevant groundwork for the Handbook’s proposals for dealing with shrinkage in the age of COVID-19 and beyond.

Urban shrinkage is rising to the top of the political agenda in Europe as more cities are shrinking in the prolonged economic downturn we encounter. Coupled with unprecedented budgetary austerity and rapidly ageing populations, ‘stagnating’ and ‘shrinking’ cities have emerged as a key challenge for policy and practice for decades to come. Local actors need to find new ways of collaborating across sectors, agencies and disciplines to unlock opportunities for interventions that mitigate the worst effects of urban shrinkage and long-term decline. Future Directions for the European Shrinking City focuses on policy and planning interventions that can be taken by municipalities and their local stakeholders to tackle stagnation and decline. With case studies from a range of European countries this book proposes ways to tackle shrinkage through governance, policy, planning, social, economic and management interventions. Edited by William J.V. Neill and Hans Schlappa, this book is ideally suited for policy makers and practitioners in urban planning, regeneration, and economic development dealing with pressing spatial and socio-economic issues on a European scale.