Challenges for the Resilience Capacity of Romanian Shrinking Cities

Reconsidering the effects of urban form on PM2.5 concentrations: an urban shrinkage perspective

The phenomenon of urban shrinkage is currently occurring worldwide; however, the "growth-oriented" planning paradigm is not suitable for these shrinking cities. Reconsidering the relationship between urban form and PM_2.5 concentrations from the perspective of urban shrinkage can help provide a research reference for controlling air pollution and optimizing the spatial layout of shrinking cities. This study takes shrinking areas in China as the research subject, which are divided into four research groups according to their shrinkage degree. The empirical results indicate that the average PM_2.5 concentrations decrease with the aggravation of urban shrinkage. In terms of the effect of urban form on PM_2.5 concentrations, the urban size is always positively related to PM_2.5 concentrations, while the impact of urban fragmentation on PM_2.5 concentrations is negligible. Further, urban shape positively affects PM_2.5 concentrations only in moderately and severely shrinking cities. Cities with sprawling urban forms have higher PM_2.5 concentrations, except for those facing severe shrinking trends. This study suggests that governments in shrinking cities should reasonably adjust both the urban form and land use to improve air quality based on the degree of urban shrinkage.

Visualizing and Understanding Shrinking Cities and Towns (SCT) Research: A Network Analysis

The world is undergoing an unprecedented trend of fast urbanization, which causes a range of socio-environmental consequences, one of which is shrinking cities and towns (SCT). SCT refer to the cities or towns that are experiencing population decline and economic downturn. In the existing literature, there have been numerous studies on SCT; however, there is a lack of study which investigates its knowledge domains. Therefore, this paper aims to conduct a scientometric analysis to achieve an outline of the SCT research status. Through the procedures of literature search and screening, a total of 716 SCT-related studies were extracted from the Scopus. The VOSviewer software system program was then utilized to visualize the present SCT-related studies. The visualization results revealed that the journal of Sustainability made significant contributions to the SCT research in terms of relevant publications. In addition, Haase, Annegret received the most co-citations, and was also the most productive author in this field. Furthermore, it was identified that current SCT research is mainly conducted in developed countries. Through the analysis of keywords, the emerging research topics were revealed. Discussions were further made from the perspectives of prevailing research methods, evaluation criteria, and solutions for SCT problems.

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.

A Meta-Overview and Bibliometric Analysis of Resilience in Spatial Planning - the Relevance of Place-Based Approaches

This study offers a literature review and bibliometric analysis aiming to enhance our understanding of the actual contribution of resilience approaches to spatial and territorial development and planning studies. Using citation link-based clustering and statistical text-mining techniques (in terms of prevalence of topics, over time, extraction of relevant terms, keywords frequencies), our study maps scientific domains that include the spatial dimension of resilience thinking. It offers a systematic assessment of modern approaches by connecting profoundly theoretical views to more instrumental and policy-oriented approaches. Firstly, the theoretical background of spatial resilience used in numerous studies in various fields is analysed from the viewpoint of the type of embedded resilience (engineering, ecological, social-ecological, economic, social etc.). Secondly, we review and discuss the significance of three main and consistent research directions in terms of different scales and political/institutional contexts that matter from the viewpoint of spatial and territorial planning. Our findings show that spatial resilience debates are far from being settled, as according to many scientists, resilience measurements are often based on technical-reductionist frameworks that cannot comprehensively reflect the complex systems and issues they address. Our conclusions highlight the necessity of a harmonized framework and integrated perspective on resilience in sustainable territorial planning and development, in both theoretical and empirical contexts.

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

EU post-socialist countries are nowadays the epicenter of urban shrinkage, despite economic growth trajectories reported during the last decades. However, systematic assessments of urban shrinkage patterns for this part of the continent are surprisingly insufficiently addressed in the literature, and the relationship between urban demographic decline/growth and economic decline/growth is still to be understood. This paper first delivers a state-of-the-art of the peculiarities of urban shrinkage in East-Central EU countries. Secondly, it employs an analysis grid to assess severity, prevalence, persistence, speed and regional incidence of urban decline in Romania—one of the most affected post-socialist countries within the European Union. Thirdly, it explores the statistical association between urban shrinkage severity and economic growth, on one hand, and between urban shrinkage severity and municipality revenues, on the other. Results show that urban shrinkage is currently increasing in prevalence and severity among Romanian cities, thus continuing an alarming trend that started in 1990. Secondly, the results pinpoint a statistically significant association between demographic shrinkage, local economic output and municipalities’ own-source revenues. However, the size effects are rather weak, suggesting a more nuanced relationship between economic and demographic urban growth than that predicted by some theories of urban change.

Does One Decade of Urban Policy for the Shrinking City Make Visible Progress in Urban Re-Urbanization? A Case Study of Bytom, Poland

Planning and managing the declining fortunes of shrinking cities are essential in shaping urban policy in post-industrial urban societies, especially in Central and Eastern European states. Many studies emphasize city management and redevelopment as important policy constituencies for driving revitalization. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about policy-making and the underlying political and socio-economic disagreements that impact successful measures to reverse urbanization and regenerate post-industrial cities. This paper provides a case of urban policy-making for Bytom—a severely shrinking city in southern Poland. This article aims to clarify the mismatch between the city’s policy and the socio-economic situation Bytom after 2010. This discrepancy could have weakened effective policy to address shrinkage and revitalization. Statistical and cartographic methods (choropleth maps) helped analyze the socio-economic changes in Bytom and its shrinking. The issues related to the city’s policy were based primarily on free-form interviews and the analysis of municipal and regional documents concerning Bytom. The conducted research shows the need for concerted and coordinated policy direction that considers the real possibilities of implementing pro-development projects. Such expectations also result from the opinions of local communities. Finding a compromise between the idea of active support for projects implemented in a shrinking city and an appropriate urban policy is expected. Such an approach also requires further strengthening of social and economic participation in local and regional governance.

Urban or Rural: Does It Make A Difference for Economic Resilience? A Modelling Study on Economic and Cultural Geography in Romania

This article aims at investigating and measuring the economic resilience of local communities (43 urban and 403 rural) in Romania. The study focuses on the implications of the deep economic and financial crisis from 2008 to 2011 and explores the capacity of Romanian local economies in the North-West region to respond to these events. The research consists of developing an appropriate framework for assessing and quantifying community economic resilience, based on previous research of existing literature, and of measuring local economic development through a composite indicator by aggregating a series of variables using principal component analysis. The results show some striking differences between urban and rural communities in terms of impact, recovery, and performance compared with a pre-crisis level. Through regression analysis we were able to not only identify the determinants/explanatory factors for high-impact resilience that helped the recovery after an economic shock, but also the resilience drivers for ‘bouncing forward’ after the crisis, for both urban and rural communities. Our findings show an interesting change in the regional economy: some economic activities from the large urban areas in Romania moved to the nearby rural areas.

Sustainable Development of Industry-Environmental System Based on Resilience Perspective

The contradiction between industrial development and ecological environment pressure has been becoming progressively severe. Under this circumstance, more attention has been paid to the balance between industrial economic development and environmental deterioration and resource consumption. Thus, this study takes the development of industry and ecological environment change as an interactive system consideration, and comprehensively evaluates the changes of the industrial–environment system on resilience perspective with innovation. Accordingly, this paper establishes a comprehensive evaluation model. The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and Industrial Structure Entropy (ISE) were applied to analyze the current environment pressure and industrial conditions. Then, the catastrophe theory was used to evaluate the reasonably established index system for the impact of various factors in the industrial–environment system on the resilience change. Next, the adaptive cycle model was used to analyze the evaluation results and reveals the dynamic change law of the system in the resilience range. Finally, Chengdu was selected as the research area to verify the validity of the whole study. It was found that the resilient change process of Chengdu industry–environmental system accord with the four-stage theory of adaptive cycle model. The resilient level of the city was also improved during the cycle. The result of the study can be useful to future plans and decisions. What is more, understanding the characteristics of each stage will be helpful to determine the reasonable implementation time of each key factor and improve its feedback ability.

Measuring Sustainable Development Goals at a Local Level: A Case of a Metropolitan Area in Romania

Metropolitan areas became the breeding ground for economic, political, and cultural concentration as well as for creativity and innovation. Therefore, sustainability within the urban dimension plays a crucial role in the overall success to attain the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and their targets under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015. Nevertheless, for cities, regions, or countries to monitor and measure their progress, there is a need for harmonized and reliable indicators. Consequently, the current study addresses sustainability on a local level by measuring the extent to which a Romanian metropolitan area achieves the SDGs agreed to in 2015 by the 193-member states of the United Nations. The paper analyses 16 out of the 17 SD (Sustainable Development) goals as the goal titled “Life below water” was not applicable. Relying on mainly quantitative data, we used the method of normalization and aggregation based on the arithmetic mean, which helped us to calculate the scores attained by each of the component localities of the metropolitan area within the SDGs and their overall SDG index. Next to this, the study combines the quantitative data analysis with a GIS (Geographic Information System) computer mapping technique. The results show that the municipality achieved the best results in the metropolitan area and a vertical development process from west to the east prevails. Measuring progress through a well-defined set of indicators and an optimization technique proved to be crucial in defining attainments’ levels within the metropolitan area.

Evolving Obligatory Passage Points to Sustain Service Systems: The Case of Traditional Market Revitalization in Hsinchu City, Taiwan

“City” could be viewed as an integration of various service systems with relocated social, economic, and environmental capitals under urbanization. It was evidential in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, where once the biggest market, Dongmen Market (DMM), declined because the replacement of urban consumption patterns along with the setup of high tech science park bringing new residences. This research took the perspectives of Service-Dominant Logic (S-DL) and Actor Network Theory (ANT) to study the development of new service systems and how they were sustained through the revitalization by a two-year ethnographic study. We explain how stakeholders propose and receive value within and among service systems. A unique actor called obligatory passage point (OPP) was formed in the translation phases of actor networks, delivering the co-created value by stakeholders with different interests. Four identified OPPs indicated that their “evolution process” drove the revitalization of DMM toward a sustainable service system. A framework of open innovation practice was formulated as iterative cycles with four phases: (1) actor interacting; (2) value co-creating; (3) relationship modeling; and (4) OPP transforming, which operationalized the OPP evolution from its destruction to construction. The application of the OPP evolution process to revitalizing urban service systems contributes to practitioners in social innovation to sustain urban service systems in addition to the theoretical formation of OPP evolution.