Urban growth and decline: Europe’s shrinking cities in a comparative perspective 1990–2010

At the beginning of the 21st century, the phenomenon of shrinking cities was widely discussed across Europe. Most European countries saw an increasingly ageing population and an internal migration from underdeveloped to more competitive locations. Since the turn of the century, and in contrast to the past, a great deal has been written about the causes and impacts of shrinkage, as well as about policies and planning strategies. However, the state of knowledge in a cross-national comparative perspective is rather poor because, to date, studies have basically analysed large cities and empirical evidence hardly shifts attention to the contextual influence on local dynamics. Against this background, this paper fills the gap between macrotheoretical conceptualisation and empirical observation by testing a heuristic model of urban shrinkage encompassing the whole range of cities in Europe. The paper questions to what extent urban shrinkage represents a broader trend in Europe in terms of both duration and distribution, and aims to investigate the influence of economic and demographic drivers on the non-linear evolution of shrinking cities in Europe. Thereby, the spatial distribution of different trajectories of shrinking cities in urban Europe in the period from 1990 to 2010 will be presented in a comprehensive survey which reveals that 20% of European cities experienced shrinkage between 1990 and 2010, whereas 883 cities face recent shrinkage.