Patterns of Urban Shrinkage: A Systematic Analysis of Romanian Cities (1992–2020)

Urban Shrinkage and Urban Vitality Correlation Research in the Three Northeastern Provinces of China

In the global trend of urban shrinkage, urban vitality, as one of the important representations of high-quality urban development, has become a breakthrough. More and more scholars advocate to awaken urban vitality, so as to realize the high-quality development of shrinking cities. This paper takes the municipal districts of 34 cities in the three northeastern provinces of China as study areas, based on the broad concept of urban shrinkage, selects the indicators of population, economy and society, and uses the "two-step diagnostic method" which is consistent with Chinese conditions to identify the urban shrinkage from 2010 to 2018. In this research, the indexes of economic, social, cultural, environmental and spatial dimensions are selected, and the urban vitality and the vitality of each dimension from 2010 to 2018 are calculated and analyzed by using the entropy weight method (EWM). Then, this paper analyzes the correlation between urban shrinkage and urban vitality by Pearson correlation coefficient. The results show that: (1) urban shrinkage in the three northeastern provinces of China has become a regional remarkable phenomenon, which is also an inevitable process in some regions of China and even the world; (2) overall, the urban vitality of cities in the three northeastern provinces of China is steady and rising a little, and there is an obvious spatial agglomeration pattern like "central city polarization"; (3) there is a significant correlation between urban shrinkage and urban vitality, that is, the lower the degree of urban shrinkage, the higher the urban vitality, showing the opposite trend in the process of urban development; (4) the influence of urban shrinkage on each dimension of urban vitality is different, and the correlation results are different, too. In the planning process of shrinking cities in the future, paying attention to the relationship between urban vitality and urban shrinkage, conducting benign guidance on this basis, and adjusting urban vitality elements of different dimensions to stimulate urban development power can enhance urban competitiveness and achieve better development.

Urban Shrinking Cities in Romania and The Netherlands—A Possible Policy Framing

In the last decades of the 20th century, the patterns of urban shrinkage defined a worldwide phenomenon. They are visible in all developed regions, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, on the background of the economic growth trajectories and social health improvements. Despite this fact, the public discourse in a post-socialist country such as Romania is only focused on urban decline and its demographic dynamics sliding, when in fact urban shrinkage is more advanced, even to the point of becoming a selective phenomenon in developed countries such as The Netherlands. Our focus on urban shrinkage was driven by the fact that Romania can develop a policy framing regarding urban shrinkage, using example practices from a developed country such as The Netherlands. Moreover, it can learn how to deal with urban shrinkage effects by establishing certain differences which can cope with veritable lessons from both sides. This paper firstly investigates the urban shrinkage phenomenon observed in three cities in Romania and in three cities in The Netherlands. Secondly, it presents an analysis of demographic statistical data using the shift-and-share method to emphasize the persistence of urban shrinkage in the age structure of the total population of shrinking cities from both regions. Thirdly, it offers some lessons from both countries, finally presenting a mutual learning framework that can be applied to other regions in Europe.