1st Edition
Shrinking Cities A Global Perspective
This book examines a rapidly emerging new topic in urban settlement patterns: the role of shrinking cities. Much coverage is given to declining fertility rates, ageing populations and economic restructuring as the factors behind shrinking cities, but there is also reference to resource depletion, the demise of single-company towns and the micro-location of environmental hazards.
The contributions show that shrinkage can occur at any scale – from neighbourhood to macro-region - and they consider whether shrinkage of metropolitan areas as a whole may be a future trend. Also addressed in this volume is the question of whether urban shrinkage policies are necessary or effective.
The book comprises four parts:
- world or regional issues (with reference to the European Union and Latin America);
- national case studies (the United States, India, China, Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Romania and Estonia);
- city case studies (Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Naples, Belfast and Halle);
- and broad issues such as the environmental consequences of shrinking cities.
This book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners working in the fields of urban studies, economic geography and public policy.
Introduction (Harry W. Richardson and Chang Woon Nam) Part One: National Analyses 1. The United States (Wendell Cox) 2. Germany (Chang Woon Nam and Alex Ebertz) 3. Romania (Michaela Coconceau, Daniele Constantin and Alina Schoenberg) 4. Estonia (Peter Friedrich, Kadi Timpmann and Kadri Ukrainski) 5. South Korea (Myung-Jin Jun) 6. Japan (Andre Sorensen) Part Two: Cities 7. Detroit (George Glaister) 8. Buffalo (Jiyoung Park) 9. Cleveland (Michael Fogarty) 10. Halle (Alex Ebertz and Chang Woon Nam) 11. Naples (Gerardo Schettino) 12. Belfast (Frank Gaffikin) 13. Manchester (Jon Coaffee) 14. Taipei (Cheng-Yi Lin) Part Three: General Issues 15. The Policy Implications from Expanding City Successes for Shrinking Cities (Harry W. Richardson) 16. Planning for the "Smart Decline" of Shrinking Cities (Justin Hollander) 17. Environmental Issues in Shrinking Cities (Tilman Rave) 18. Conclusions (Harry W. Richardson and Chang Woon Nam)
Biography
Harry W. Richardson is the James Irvine Chair of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Southern California, USA.
Chang Woon Nam is Senior Economist at the Ifo Institute, Munich, Germany.