Urbanization and City Planning

Urban shrinkage refers to the sustained loss of population, economic activity, and infrastructure function in cities—a process that has accelerated in post-socialist regions of Central and Eastern Europe as deindustrialization, out-migration, and suburbanization hollowed out urban cores once built for far larger populations. Researchers in this area examine how vacancy spreads across neighborhoods, how socio-spatial inequalities deepen when shrinkage affects some districts far more than others, and how municipal governments attempt to manage land that has no immediate use without simply waiting for growth that may never return. A central tension in current work is whether planning frameworks designed around expansion can be adapted to govern contraction—or whether fundamentally different governance models are needed for cities whose futures involve fewer people rather than more. Questions about when and whether shrinking cities can achieve genuine resilience, rather than merely stabilizing decline, remain actively contested.

Works

151,028

Total citations

542,887

Keywords

Shrinking CitiesUrban DeclinePost-Socialist UrbanismSocio-Spatial DisparitiesVacant Land ManagementSuburbanization