International Symposium "Coping with City Shrinkage and Demographic Change - Lessons from around the Globe"
30.-31.03.2006 Dresden, Germany
Dr. Thorsten Wiechmann, Leibniz-Institute of Ecological and Regional Development (IOER), Dresden (Germany)
Dr. Thorsten Wiechmann
Abstract
Types of Shrinking Cities - Introductive Notes on a Global Issue
Only a few years ago, ‘shrinkage’ was a political taboo in Europe and systematically disregarded as a dominant development trend in specific areas. This was also true for East Germany, despite the fact, that the real development was long since obvious. But within the administrative system, traditionally oriented towards growth objectives, shrinkage was considered to be not policy compliant.
Since approximately five years the situation has changed significantly. The term ‘shrinkage’ resounded throughout the land. Innumerable activities and events in Germany deal with the issue.
What is often forgotten in the recent debate in Germany is that shrinkage is by no means just an East German problem. Since years one can observe demographic decline in great parts of Europe. Even on a global scale urban shrinkage is a widespread phenomenon. According to different studies every 6th to 4th large city worldwide has lost population in the 1990ies.
Even though the processes of shrinkage take place in different cultural and socio-economic settings the international comparative viewpoint is essential to the corresponding debate. The paper sets out to develop a loose framework for the following contributions by scholars from five continents by introducing a shared definition of the shrinking city phenomenon as an essential basis for international comparisons.
A ‘shrinking city’ is defined as a densely populated urban area with a minimum population of 10,000 residents that has faced a population loss in large parts of it for a more than 2 years and is undergoing economic transformations with some symptoms of a structural crisis. Starting from this definition the paper outlines a basic typology of shrinking cities.
