Thilo Lang

Shrinkage, Metropolization and Peripheralization in East Germany

Since around 2000, there has been extensive research on questions regarding shrinkage and urban renewal in Germany after a task force report revealed approximately 1.4 million vacant flats in East Germany. Since then, most towns and cities have been labelled “shrinking cities” there. While from a planning perspective urban decline and also shrinking cities are widely studied phenomena throughout the industrialized world and a substantial literature exists on the phenomenon in Germany, the impact of political debates and normative considerations is under-researched. This paper highlights the role of political–normative ideas of metropolization and societal relations within this complex core–periphery process, elaborating on the concept of peripheralization and calling for further research.

Urban Resilience and New Institutional Theory – A Happy Couple for Urban and Regional Studies?

Every town and city is affected by trends of transformation and by processes of economic structural change. Some towns, cities, or regions can adapt to such developments while in others, structural change leads to multiple decline. The concept of urban resilience seems to offer ideas that make it easier to understand such differences.

Urban Development in Central and Eastern Europe – Between Peripheralization and Centralization?

The paper provides a theoretical account of the terms peripheralization and polarization, which are used as conceptual contexts. The authors examine whether spatial development in Central and Eastern Europe can be described as a process of polarization and whether this can be seen as the result of current regional and national spatial policies. Empirically, the paper explores ongoing research projects in Ljubljana, Slovenia and Poznań, Poland in relation to the less dynamic parts of these countries in order to identify further research needs. Viewing spatial development in Slovenia and in the Poznań region from the viewpoint of polarization and peripheralization has opened alternative viewpoints on spatial development. A process-based and dynamic approach to investigating disparities should reflect views on the periphery and the center and their specific interrelationships. The perspective of seeing the processes of centralization and peripheralization as related and the combination of structural and socio-political aspects in the constitution of peripheral and central spaces will advance the current state-of-the-art research on spatial development issues in Central and Eastern Europe.

Re-thinking non-core regions: planning strategies and practices beyond growth

ABSTRACT Periods of ongoing growth in the economy and demographics have come to a halt for many European regions for various reasons, challenging their economic development prospects. Despite the heterogeneous nature of stagnation, decline, peripheralization or even stigmatization to be found there, these configurations ‘beyond growth’ have in common that short-term ‘fire-fighting’ policy approaches aiming to foster regional economic growth face some important limitations. We argue that this has to do, among other things, with the overall direction of established and orthodox planning approaches that are predominantly based on growth-oriented paradigms and implicitly or explicitly work with dichotomous categories such as core–periphery and metropolitan versus non-metropolitan spaces; these do, however, not capture local realities in these cases. Using the notion of non-core regions, we plead for conceptualizing non-core regions and their regional economic development trajectories in different ways: thinking ‘beyond growth’. Such alternative ideas should be informed by alternative understandings of growth, development and sustainability in order to influence theories and concepts, but also to support new approaches to planning practice. To this aim, we discuss non-core regions from a social constructivist perspective, elaborating some points of departure for conceptualizing and practising regional planning ‘beyond growth’.

Conclusions: Current and Future Perspectives on Return Migration and Regional Development in Europe

This final chapter brings together the theoretical debates, methodological discussions and empirical results portrayed in this book. The aim of the book was to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of research on return migration and its nexus with regional development in Europe. This volume tells a story which to date has been poorly told, because return migration is studied mainly from the position of return from Europe to other continents. Furthermore, it enriches the knowledge on specific links between migration and development by reporting on the specific role of returning migrants, broadening the classic focus on financial remittances.

Introduction: Mobility Against the Stream? New Concepts, Methodological Approaches and Regional Perspectives on Return Migration in Europe

In The Road Home, the reader can accompany the fictive character of Lev, an Eastern European migrant heading to the UK to find a job and support his family back home. Having just left his home country, he is already thinking about his return. English novelist Rose Tremain tells a story, typical of the migration patterns within Europe since the mid-2000s. The Eastern enlargement of the EU and the creation of a common European labour market induced significant migration flows from the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to high-income countries, mainly in Western and Northern Europe. Consequently, many regions throughout CEE have been experiencing large-scale emigration of labour, whereas many regions in the ‘old’ Europe have benefited from the arrival of skilled labour. This imbalance in labour migration has raised new concerns about social, economic and territorial cohesion throughout the EU.

Socio-Economic Regeneration Initiatives and Strategic Governance in Old Industrial Towns Outside of Agglomerations

In recent years, the concept of governance entered the debate about urban development. In particular, urban governance is often seen as a key to regeneration.