EUKN Urban Review: Shrinking Cities, Towards Urban Resilience

Inspired by the RE-CITIES conference our director Martin Grisel spoke at earlier this month, the March Urban Review is focusing on the topic of shrinking cities. These are urban areas experiencing a decline in economic and social bases with an out-migration of population or low fertility rates. The urban shrinkage process is becoming more and more prominent across Europe, making it an ageing and shrinking continent.

Despite the phenomenon being linked to a number of issues, some of the impacts of urban shrinkage can provide benefits to cities, and beyond. From cohesion policies on national and EU level to strengthen urban-territorial linkages, to embracing shrinking cities and a new appreciation for suburbia, a number of opportunities can be linked to urban shrinkage. What’s more is that cities adapting to such challenges can gain resilience and learn to adapt to dynamic contemporary contexts and problems they are and will have to deal with.

Read our March newsletter to explore the benefits of urban shrinkage according to the EUKN director Martin Grisel in his Urban Voice interview of the month, and to learn more on related EUKN activities, such as he three Policy Labs of the French EU presidency and the CONEXUS project.