Ignoring and denying, or why urban shrinkage remains off the agenda

Insights from the Netherlands and Finland

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6419720
AutoresM Marjanovic (0000-0001-6741-8477, University College London, autor de correspondencia), Johanna Lilius (0000-0002-3002-3997, Aalto University)
Año2025
Volumen170
Páginas106540-106540
Fecha de publicación2025-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0264-2751 • E-ISSN: 1873-6084
EditorialElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.cities.2025.106540
OpenAlexW4415767127
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas30

Urban shrinkage is often initially met with the strategies of ignoring and denying, where policymakers either fail to recognize the issue, avoid addressing it, or actively reject its existence. This paper addresses three gaps in the current understanding of these strategies: the lack of context-specific insights into their underlying drivers, the tendency to conflate ignoring and denying despite their distinct characteristics, and the limited exploration of the practices through which they take shape. Through a comparative analysis of two shrinking regions in European welfare states, Satakunta (Finland) and Parkstad Limburg (Netherlands), we uncover a range of drivers and practices underpinning the ignoring and denying of shrinkage. Our findings identify both shared patterns across the studied cases and context-specific dynamics shaped by each region's political and social complexities. Ignoring is linked to a perceived lack of importance and involves actively marginalizing alternative perspectives, while denying arises when addressing shrinkage is seen as politically inconvenient, often involving deliberately discrediting opposing views. These strategies are politically motivated, designed to maintain the status quo by keeping shrinkage off the decision-making agenda. The paper illustrates how they are strategically employed to protect existing institutional and political structures. Therefore, our findings suggest that engaging decision-makers who ignore shrinkage may require emphasizing contextual and systemic discourses, while addressing denial may call for prioritizing technical-analytical and ideological narratives. We conclude by stressing the need for further research on the drivers and outcomes of these strategies in diverse political contexts to improve the ability to address urban shrinkage effectively.

Shrinkage · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Urban Studies · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies · Urbanization and City Planning