Demographic change has become a major topic regarding the use and stability of European urban regions. It can be seen as the major driving force responsible for “growth” and “non-growth” or “decline” pathways in urban regions for the coming decades. Growing and shrinking urban regions do exist simultaneously next to each other. The trend towards further urban sprawl and dispersion observed in the 1980s in western Europe and the 1990s in East Central Europe accompanying the transition process are about to be replaced by shrinkage and perforation. This is mainly due to the recent decrease in birth rates, ageing and shifting household structures. This chapter analyses the trends and spatial patterns of the impact of demographic changes in urban regions. In the first part different features of demographic change are presented. In the second part, the paper expands on how demographic change affects urban land use, fabric, housing markets, infrastructure, and greenery. Since eastern Germany has been shrinking substantially since 1990, the paper uses this example to show a case in point embedded into the overall European context.
Keywords: Demographic change; shrinkage; perforation; land use impacts; eastern Germany
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© 2008 Springer
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Haase, D., Seppelt, R., Haase, A. (2008). Land use impacts of demographic change – lessons from Eastern German urban regions. In: Petrosillo, I., et al. Use of Landscape Sciences for the Assessment of Environmental Security. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6594-1_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6594-1_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-6588-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-6594-1
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