Shrinking Smart as a new planning concept: Benchmarking planning and policy responses to urban shrinkage and depopulation

Urban shrinkage represents a challenge for planners, policy makers and citizens alike. Academic discussions on the potentials of urban shrinkage as a new setting for planning have led to the emergence of the idea of “Shrinking Smart” as a new planning concept (Hollander and Németh 2011; Wiechmann and Pallagst 2012). Research on the topic has developed on a conceptually incoherent theoretical grounds as discussions on the limits and significance of urban shrinkage as a term on its own continue (Bernt 2016; Hirt and Beauregard 2019; Berglund 2020). In parallel, urban shrinkage continues to be a significant phenomenon across Europe, often as a result of long-term processes of depopulation. Thus, the discussions on the scope and potential applicability of “Shrinking Smart” as a new planning concept remain relevant for planning practice. The differences in planning systems also bring forward the question of delineating the scope of planning and its intersection with policy making in a broader sense.

This presentation attempts to respond to the above conceptual and practice-oriented challenges by proposing a benchmarking analysis of various responses to urban shrinkage and depopulation from Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. Applying a historical perspective to the handling of urban shrinkage and depopulation in three significantly different settings and planning systems, the presented empirical results illustrate the main differences and key points of leverage (Room 2005) in handling urban shrinkage as an issue of planning and policy making. The conclusions from the comparative analysis are then transformed into a proposal for “Shrinking Smart” as a new planning concept that encompasses the planning process and the normative orientation of policies and plans with specific considerations for spatial development and economy. The proposed planning concept identifies key factors that planners and policy makers need to consider in terms of approaching urban shrinkage or depopulation from contemporary perspective and in reference to the differences in planning systems. Finally, the presentation addresses key points in the academic debate on the conceptual discussions between urban shrinkage and “Shrinking Smart”.

With the multifaceted approach to the conceptualization of urban shrinkage, the presentation contributes to three main perspectives. Firstly, it challenges and further develops the academic discussion on urban shrinkage by critically analysing it through a broader theoretical framework. Secondly, it provides a methodological contribution to cross-national comparative research on urban shrinkage and depopulation through the introduction of a benchmarking framework (Papaioannou, Rush, and Bessant 2006). Lastly, it contributes to establishing conceptual and applicability links between the scientific and practice-oriented perspective to handling urban shrinkage and depopulation through embedding an applicable planning concept in the broader context of planning processes, policy making practices and planning systems in Europe.