Katrin Großmann

Varieties of shrinkage in European cities

The issue of urban shrinkage has become the new ‘normal’ across Europe: a large number of urban areas find themselves amongst the cities losing population. According to recent studies, almost 42 per cent of all large European cities are currently shrinking. In eastern Europe, shrinking cities have formed the overwhelming majority – here, three out of four cities report a decrease in population. Shrinkage has proved to be a very diverse and complex phenomenon. In our understanding, a considerable and constant loss of population by an urban area classifies it as a shrinking city. So, while the indicator of shrinkage used here is rather simple, the nature of the process and its causes and consequences for the affected urban areas are multifaceted and need to be explained and understood in further detail. Set against this background, the article presents, first, urban shrinkage as both spatially and temporally uneven. Second, this article shows that the causes of urban shrinkage are as varied as they are numerous. We explore the ‘pluralist world of urban shrinkage’ in the European Union and beyond. The article provides an original process model of urban shrinkage, bringing together its causes, impacts and dynamics, and setting them in the context of locally based urban trajectories. The main argument of this arrticle is that there is no ‘grand explanatory heuristics’ of shrinkage; a ‘one-size-fits-all’ explanatory approach to shrinkage cannot deliver. To progress and remain relevant, one ought to move away from outcome-orientated towards process-orientated research on urban shrinkage.

How does(n't) Urban Shrinkage get onto the Agenda? Experiences from Leipzig, Liverpool, Genoa and Bytom

This article discusses the question of how urban shrinkage gets onto the agenda of public-policy agencies. It is based on a comparison of the agenda-setting histories of four European cities, Liverpool (UK), Leipzig (Germany), Genoa (Italy) and Bytom (Poland), which have all experienced severe population losses but show very different histories with respect to how local governments reacted to them. We use the political-science concepts of ‘systemic vs. institutional agendas’ and ‘policy windows’ as a conceptual frame to compare these experiences. The article demonstrates that shrinkage is hardly ever responded to in a comprehensive manner but rather that policies are only implemented in a piecemeal way in selected fields. Moreover, it is argued that variations in institutional contexts and political dynamics lead to considerable differences with regard to the chances of making shrinkage a matter of public intervention. Against this background, the article takes issue with the idea that urban shrinkage only needs to be ‘accepted’ by policymakers who would need to overcome their growth-oriented cultural perceptions, as has been suggested in a number of recent writings, and calls for a more differentiated, context-sensitive view.

Population Decline in Polish and Czech Cities during Post-socialism? Looking Behind the Official Statistics:

The evolving debate on ‘urban shrinkage’ mirrors an increasing interest in demographic phenomena on the part of urban scholars. This paper discusses ambiguous evidence about recent population decline in the large cities of Poland and the Czech Republic, with a particular focus on Łódz and Brno in general and their inner cities more specifically. By applying a mixed-method approach, the paper identifies indications of inner-city repopulation and socio-demographic diversification which are not yet apparent in register or census data. It is argued that there are indications of a silent transformation of traditional residential patterns and neighbourhoods in east central Europe. In the inner cities, this is reflected, amongst other things, by the presence of new households that may be called ‘transitory urbanites’.

European and US perspectives on shrinking cities

European and US perspectives on shrinking cities Katrin Grosmann a , Robert Beauregard b , Margaret Dewar c & Annegret Haase a a Department for Urban and Environmental Sociology, HelmholtzCentre for Environmental Research UFZ, Leipzig/Germany b Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York c Urban and Regional Planning Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

The influence of housing oversupply on residential segregation: exploring the post-socialist city of Leipzig†

In this article, we contribute to a better understanding of contextual differences related to residential segregation. We illuminate one specific contextual factor—housing oversupply—and how it intersects with historically inherited patterns of socio-spatial differentiation and other drivers of residential segregation. The study is based on an analysis of how segregation has developed over the last 20 years in the city of Leipzig, Germany. This case offers the rare possibility of studying the impact of city-wide housing oversupply on residential segregation, rather than concentrating on decline or decay in specific areas. We examine how oversupply emerged at the meeting point of changes in market structures, housing preferences, welfare state interventions, and migration trends in the post-socialist transition. Using existing statistical data, we demonstrate how oversupply has fostered a fast and thorough reshuffling of residential patterns. After a period of resolving segregation patterns from the socialist era, oversupply acts as a catalyst for recently emerging residential segregation patterns.

Soziale Dimensionen von Hitzebelastung in Grossstädten

Increasing heat stress is one of the impacts of global warming cities have to cope with and adapt to. The recent German and international debate focuses on the threat of increasing mortality rates, especially the vulnerability of the elderly people and measures to reduce it. Further, possibilities of adaptation to climate change by means of urban design to reduce the urban heat island effect are investigated. Little is known so far about the subjective perception of heat stress of different social and demographic groups, about how heat stress interferes with everyday life conduction of the inhabitants of cities, about subjective adaptation strategies and thus, about the interrelation of heat stress and the organization of the urban society. Building on two recent exploratory studies, the paper shows what other dimensions of heat stress are relevant too. The results give rise to a number of hypotheses on the social dimensions of heat stress that have to be further investigated. English Title: Social dismensions of heat-stress in cities.

Sozialräumliche Segregationsmuster in schrumpfenden Städten

Sozialraumliche Segregation – die Frage nach der ungleichen Verteilung sozialer Gruppen im Stadtraum – ist ein klassisches Thema der Stadtsoziologie. Die umfangreiche Literatur dazu entstand vor dem Hintergrund wachsender Stadte: von der Einwandererstadt Chicago, vor deren Hintergrund die sozialokologische Chicago School entstand, bis hin zu den immer weiter wachsenden Metropolen der jungeren Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, welche die Inspiration zu den „dual cities“ (Mollenkop und Castells 1991) bzw. „quartered cities“ (Marcuse und van Kempen 2000, 2002) lieferten. Wenig ist jedoch uber die Dynamik und Auspragung sozialraumlicher Segregation in schrumpfenden Stadten bekannt: Stadte, die Bevolkerung verlieren durch Wellen von Suburbanisierung, wirtschaftlichen Strukturwandel, politische Umbruche, Naturkatastrophen und bzw. oder durch den demographischen Wandel (Haase et al. 2013; Couch et al. 2012).

Lokale Unternehmen im Quartier – Bindungen, Interaktionen, Anpassung an den Quartierswandel

Der Beitrag beschaftigt sich mit der Wechselwirkung zwischen lokaler Okonomie, dem Quartier bzw. seinem raumlich-zeitlichen Wandel und seiner Spezifik. Anhand zweier Fallstudien aus Leipzig soll dargestellt werden, unter welchen Bedingungen lokale Unternehmen wirtschaften, welche Rolle das Quartier als Bezugsund Kundeneinzugsraum einnimmt, welche Faktoren auf den okonomischen Erfolg oder Misserfolg einwirken und wie Angebote der Wirtschaftsforderung wahrgenommen werden. Im Fokus der kontrastierenden Analyse stehen die Situation unterschiedlicher Unternehmenstypen in unterschiedlichen wirtschaftlichen Sektoren sowie der Einfluss des Quartierskontextes bzw. des Quartierswandels.

Soziale Heterogenität und Zusammenhalt in Leipzig-Grünau

Nach 1990 erlebten ostdeutsche Groswohnsiedlungen die Abwanderung groser Teile der Bevolkerung und Stigmatisierung von ausen. Seit der Jahrtausendwende jedoch begann fur viele grosere ostdeutsche Stadte eine Phase der Stabilisierung und Zunahme der Bevolkerungszahlen. Durch diesen Zuwachs verandert sich die Bevolkerungszusammensetzung in den Groswohnsiedlungen in demographischer, ethnischer und sozio-okonomischer Hinsicht, eine neue Heterogenitat entsteht, die den sozialen Zusammenhalt herausfordert.

Combining tacit knowledge elicitation with the SilverKnETs tool and random forests – The example of residential housing choices in Leipzig

Residential choice behaviour is a complex process underpinned by both housing market restrictions and individual preferences, which are partly conscious and partly tacit knowledge. Due to several limitations, common survey methods cannot sufficiently tap into such tacit knowledge. Thus, this paper introduces an advanced knowledge elicitation process called SilverKnETs and combines it with data mining using random forests to elicit and operationalize this type of knowledge. For the application case of the city of Leipzig, Germany, our findings indicate that rent, location and type of housing form the three predictors strongly influencing the decision making in residential choices. Other explanatory variables appear to have a much lower influence. Random forests have proven to be a promising tool for the prediction of residential choices, although the design and scope of the study govern the explanatory power of these models.