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▸ Study compared urban heat island (UHI) indicators for the city of Leipzig, Germany. ▸ Remote sensing and meteorological data were integrated. ▸ The results showed different UHIs ...depending on the chosen indicator. ▸ The modification of UHI effects by inner-city land cover classes was demonstrated. ▸ Future studies should report several UHI indicators in parallel.
Urban heat islands (UHIs) describe the phenomenon of altered temperatures that occur in urban areas when compared to their rural surroundings. UHIs influence human well-being, human health and the city as an ecological niche. UHIs can be quantified with meteorological ground measurements of air temperatures or with remotely sensed land surface temperatures (surface urban heat island). Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages and are rarely combined. Further, within these approaches, different indicators for quantifying the UHIs are used. In this methodological study, we (1) combined data on land surface and air temperatures, (2) enriched the debate by suggesting the application of indicators for the two distinct data sets and (3) systematically quantified indicators of all approaches for the city of Leipzig, Germany. A relationship between the land surface and air temperatures was established. However, the results for the single indicators showed that the absolute values of the detected UHI in Leipzig depend on the selected indicator and the data set used. The main conclusion for future studies on UHIs is to use several UHI indicators in parallel to acknowledge the uncertainty of measuring the UHI using a single indicator and either ground measurements or remote sensing.
•Paper reports on an international debate on urban shrinkage that has brought together several national strands of research.•Urban shrinkage is understood as specific trajectory of cities, population ...loss as its main indicator.•Sections: bridging national debates, aligning local concerns, comparing governance responses and understanding of shrinkage.•Aims at augmenting and sharpening the international research agenda on urban shrinkage.•Link research agenda on shrinkage with other debates in urban studies, e.g. urban inequalities or resource efficiency.
Recently, an international debate on urban shrinkage has brought together national strands of research on those cities that have experienced considerable population loss over a prolonged period. Partially as the result of language constraints and varied terminology used, these national debates have occurred rather separately and the huge potential for eliciting cross-national knowledge has just begun to be exploited. The paper aims to augment and sharpen the international research agenda on urban shrinkage. We call for a more elaborate bridging of national discussions, enhancing scholarly understanding of urban shrinkage, and reflecting upon governance and policy. Last but not least, this paper seeks to align the research on urban shrinkage with general challenges and strands of research in urban and regional studies, human geography, and spatial planning. For the chosen topics, we highlight both recent accomplishments and open questions.
Varieties of shrinkage in European cities Haase, Annegret; Bernt, Matthias; Großmann, Katrin ...
European urban and regional studies,
01/2016, Letnik:
23, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The issue of urban shrinkage has become the new ‘normal’ across Europe: a large number of urban areas find themselves amongst the cities losing population. According to recent studies, almost 42 per ...cent of all large European cities are currently shrinking. In eastern Europe, shrinking cities have formed the overwhelming majority – here, three out of four cities report a decrease in population. Shrinkage has proved to be a very diverse and complex phenomenon. In our understanding, a considerable and constant loss of population by an urban area classifies it as a shrinking city. So, while the indicator of shrinkage used here is rather simple, the nature of the process and its causes and consequences for the affected urban areas are multifaceted and need to be explained and understood in further detail. Set against this background, the article presents, first, urban shrinkage as both spatially and temporally uneven. Second, this article shows that the causes of urban shrinkage are as varied as they are numerous. We explore the ‘pluralist world of urban shrinkage’ in the European Union and beyond. The article provides an original process model of urban shrinkage, bringing together its causes, impacts and dynamics, and setting them in the context of locally based urban trajectories. The main argument of this arrticle is that there is no ‘grand explanatory heuristics’ of shrinkage; a ‘one-size-fits-all’ explanatory approach to shrinkage cannot deliver. To progress and remain relevant, one ought to move away from outcome-orientated towards process-orientated research on urban shrinkage.
Energy efficiency in the housing stock has been praised as a win-win strategy reducing end energy use for heating and alleviating energy poverty. However, policies to foster energy efficiency ...improvements have led to rising protests and conflicts because investments made into retrofitting became a means of speculation and displacement of low-income residents. Conflict theory emphasises the role of conflicts as drivers of social change; they open a window into how and by whom the legitimacy of existing rules and government is challenged. The paper uses social conflict theory to interpret the conflicting interests and issues at stake here. It concludes that what seemed to be a conflict between social and ecological goals, turns out to be a distributional conflict around affordable housing and against unjust distributions of cost burdens of energy transitions. The manifest conflicts between tenants and the housing industries were caused – or enabled – through the specific policy context. The state had imposed new norms for energy standards of buildings and left their economic consequences to be solved in the conflicts between housing companies and tenants. The legitimacy of these policies was challenged, especially the actual ecological effects – and thus the intention to reach the climate mitigation goals of the German government – are disputed. The conflicts described here stimulated the formation of interest groups, contributed to social movements and raised awareness to the social impacts of energy efficiency policies. Thus, the paper shows how much a clearer engagement of sustainability transition literature with conflicts and conflict theory is needed to better address justice issues in energy transitions.
•The legitimacy of housing energy efficiency policies is challenged through emerging conflicts.•Conflicts are valuable for research on justice within sustainability transitions as they are a window into conflicting goals. within sustainability transitions as they are a window into conflicting goals.•Housing energy efficiency policies in Germany caused a distributional conflict on injust cost burdens of energy transitions. a distributional conflict on unjust cost burdens of energy transitions.
The individual debates on housing poverty, energy poverty, and mobility poverty for the most part overlook the interwoven nature of all three cost burdens, especially for low-income households. This ...study examines how the three cost factors interact on a household level, the consequences for those affected by cost burdens, and how they cope and negotiate their expenses. Our research comprises two sets of semi-structured interviews, one before and one during the energy crisis, to gain insight into household experiences and constraints. We found that the freedom to choose where and how to live largely determines how households heat their homes and organize their mobility. The housing crisis together with housing market mechanisms appears to be the main driver of this cost trap; and from here, a complex interplay of causal factors unfolds. Location, often conceived of in terms of an urban–rural divide, seems to be of secondary importance. The intersection of cost burdens results in stress, anxiety, and social exclusion, further limiting the capacity for coping.
Since the second half of the 20th century, urban shrinkage has become a common pathway of transformation for many large cities across the globe. Although the appearance of shrinkage is fairly ...universal—typically manifested in dwindling population, emerging vacant spaces, and the underuse of existing urban infrastructure, ranging from schools and parks to water pipelines—its essence is hidden from view. Phenomena related to shrinkage have been discussed predominantly using terms such as decline, decay, blight, abandonment, disurbanization, urban crisis, and demographic change. Amongst others, these concepts were typically related to specific national contexts, installed in distinct explanatory frameworks, based around diverging normative accounts, ultimately leading to very different policy implications. Yet there is still a lack of conceptualization and integration of shrinkage into the wider theoretical debates in human geography, town and country planning, urban and regional studies, and social sciences at large. The problem here is not only to explain how shrinkage comes about, but also to study shrinkage as a process: simultaneously as a presupposition, a medium, and an outcome of continually changing social relationships. If we wish to understand shrinkage in a specific location, we need to integrate theoretical explanations with historical trajectories, as well as to combine these with a study of the specific impacts caused by shrinkage and to analyse the policy environment in which these processes take place. The authors apply an integrative model which maps the entire process across different contexts and independently of local or national specifics; it covers causes, impacts, responses, and feedback loops, and the interrelations between these aspects. The model does not ‘explain’ shrinkage in every case: instead, it builds a framework into which place-specific and time-specific explanations can be embedded. It is thus a heuristics that enables communication, if not comparison, across different contexts. With the help of this model, the authors hope to find a way in which shrinkage can be studied both in a conceptually rigorous and in an historically specific way. Instead of an invariant ‘process of shrinkage’, they portray a ‘pluralist world of shrinkages’.
This article discusses the question of how urban shrinkage gets onto the agenda of public‐policy agencies. It is based on a comparison of the agenda‐setting histories of four European cities, ...Liverpool (UK), Leipzig (Germany), Genoa (Italy) and Bytom (Poland), which have all experienced severe population losses but show very different histories with respect to how local governments reacted to them. We use the political‐science concepts of ‘systemic vs. institutional agendas’ and ‘policy windows’ as a conceptual frame to compare these experiences. The article demonstrates that shrinkage is hardly ever responded to in a comprehensive manner but rather that policies are only implemented in a piecemeal way in selected fields. Moreover, it is argued that variations in institutional contexts and political dynamics lead to considerable differences with regard to the chances of making shrinkage a matter of public intervention. Against this background, the article takes issue with the idea that urban shrinkage only needs to be ‘accepted’ by policymakers who would need to overcome their growth‐oriented cultural perceptions, as has been suggested in a number of recent writings, and calls for a more differentiated, context‐sensitive view.
Interest in urban shrinkage has steadily grown among scholars worldwide and Germany has received great attention in shrinkage-related research. Little has been written, however, about how the ...discussion of urban shrinkage has shaped policy responses and vice versa. This paper seeks to fill this gap with respect to the German experience by examining the relationship between (1) the state and conditions of shrinkage, (2) the discussion, and (3) the design and implementation of policies to address the challenges posed by shrinkage. Covering a time span from the 1970s to today, we explore four distinct chronological phases of this triangular relationship. Particular focus is directed to the rapid shrinkage trajectory of eastern Germany in the 1990s, which was seen as a particularly critical challenge, and which was addressed nationally by public policies through the unique development program known as Stadtumbau Ost. Based on our analysis, we conclude that the phases of the German experience identified represent paradigmatic situations that can be found elsewhere, and thus provide insight into why debates on urban shrinkage emerge, how they result in policies and vice versa and, finally, what can be learnt from this great body of knowledge.
•Urban shrinkage debate in Germany underwent distinct chronological phases.•Urban shrinkage was enforced by de-industrialization and out-migration after 1990.•Policy addressing urban shrinkage in Germany was pragmatic and solution-oriented.•German shrinkage debate can be considered highly ‘operational’.
The literature on shrinking cities often portrays local initiatives in two contrasting ways: either as marginal, powerless, and somewhat backwards-oriented actors, or as human capital, a resource for ...development, and even as the hope for a more democratic development. However, there is a risk that scholarship unintentionally contributes to local initiatives being included in neoliberal development agendas. During our field research in two small, shrinking, and peripheralized towns in Finland and Germany, we discovered that both perspectives are misleading. They distract from the actual conditions of the initiatives' work, the causes of their financial or demographic precarity, and the self-responsibilization that is common among such initiatives. Scarcity motivates a DI(F)Y approach, organizing services and amenities on limited resources to enhance the quality of life in the area. This limited availability may seem like a natural result of population decline. By comparing the German and Finnish cases, we can see how state policies towards peripheral areas affect the work of local initiatives. This demonstrates that precarity in shrinking places is a result of policies rather than demographic development trajectory.
•Local initiatives in shrinking towns are neither powerless, backward-looking actors nor human capital for local development.•Peripheralization - shortage of resources, dependence and population loss - affects the modus operandi of local initiatives.•(Self-)responsibilization is a main feature of a Do-It_(For)Yourself attitude of initiatives stepping in for public services.•The comparison between Finland and Germany shows the significance of state policy toward peripheralized locations.•Neoliberal policies promoting centralisation, market solutions and (self-)responsibilization do naturalize peripheralization.
Neighborhood research today is largely concerned with two central aspects of neighborhood development: gentrification and decline. This paper sets out to enrich the discourse on neighborhood change, ...especially that concerned with so-called declining neighborhoods, by drawing on assemblage and complexity theories. These approaches emphasize processes, interdependencies, uncertainties, surprising shifts, and feedback loops in the production of specific spatial formations. We apply this framework in an examination of the development of two neighborhoods in Leipzig: an inner-city district and a large housing estate. We identify internal and external factors impacting these neighborhoods' trajectories and demonstrate how various multidirectional shifts are crucial to the specific paths-and the understanding-of these neighborhoods' development. From a conceptual perspective, we advocate for the use of assemblage thinking in addition to existing approaches to neighborhood change.
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