Shrinking cities in Spain: Shrinking medium-sized cities in the twenty-first century. depopulation and employment

Abstract

[eng] Many countries have experienced a phenomenon of hollowing out of their rural areas and small cities, which has led to a territorial imbalance in favour of large metropolitan areas. Meanwhile, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, medium-sized cities underwent intense expansion demographically and, above all, in terms of urbanisation. However, they were then affected by the Great Recession and are now in decline. The phenomenon of shrinking cities is common in North America and central and northern European countries, such as France and Germany. Indeed, urban shrinkage is a subject of academic interest but is still an incipient field of study in the literature. This research aims to encourage the analysis of shrinking cities by studying two critical aspects of urban decline: depopulation and the evolution of employment. The method analyses the evolution of the population of medium-sized cities and workers in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Results show no direct correlation between depopulation and the evolution of employment in Spanish medium-sized cities as a general phenomenon, but certainly in some specific cases.