Urban shrinkage in the periphery of a post-communist country: the story of Šiauliai

ABSTRACT

Lithuania is a post-communist country that has experienced a rapid population decline. This study examines one of the largest cities in Lithuania, Šiauliai, regarding urban shrinkage in the post-communist context, explicating Šiauliai’s shrinkage based on an adapted heuristic model as proposed by European scholars. It presents a case study and highlights the main drivers of population loss in the city, which include political and economic changes, out-migration, and negative natural change. It also examines the direct and indirect consequences of population decline in the development of the city, including brownfields, unemployment, and an aging population.

Keywords:

• urban shrinkage
• shrinking cities
• depopulation
• post-communist
• urban development
• Lithuania

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Annegret Haase and other researchers from UFZ (Germany) and Donatas Burneika from LSRC (Lithuania) for valuable comments on the research topic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The article uses the term ‘post-communist’ to explain the ongoing situation in Lithuania. The author agrees, however, that ‘post-communist’ and ‘post-socialist’ could be understood synonymously. Though the term ‘post-socialist’ may be more common in literature (for instance, Haase et al. 2014; Rink et al. 2010, and others), it is debatable whether central and eastern European countries were ever really socialist, whereas it is absolutely true that all these countries were led by communist political parties, thus, central and eastern European countries were ‘communist’ countries until the Soviet Union collapsed. For this reason, the period that started after these countries restored their independence is referred to as ‘post-communist’ in this article. This term is not new in the literature and examples in which the term is used in a scientific context can be seen in Sýkora (1999) and Sýkora and Bouzarovski (2012).

2. For more about the ideas behind the model and explanations for how to understand and use the model for research see Haase et al. (2014).

3. In the European statistical system (Eurostat), Lithuania is divided into several territorial levels: 10 regions of Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics-3 (NUTS-3) counties (in Lithuanian, apskritys), 60 local administrative unit-1 (LAU-1) municipalities (in Lithuanian, savivaldybės), and around 500 LAU-2 wards (in Lithuanian, seniūnijos).

4. The retirement age changed during the period analyzed; in 1995, the retirement age was 55 for women and 60 for men; from 2009 to 2014 it was 60 for women, 62 for men; from 2014 it has been 61 for women (since 2017, 62), and 63 for men.

5. The aging index is the number of the population aged 65 or older per 100 children aged under 15 (Statistics Lithuania 2018).

6. Calculations are made by author with the help of Professor R. Tučas (Vilnius University).

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from European Social Fund Project No. DOTSUT-149 (09.3.3-LMT-K-712-02-0062) under a grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT).

Notes on contributors

Gintarė Pociūtė-Sereikienė

Gintarė Pociūtė-Sereikienė is a geographer working as a research fellow at the Lithuanian Social Research Centre (LSRC), Institute of Human Geography and Demography. Her academic research interests encompass regional and urban geography, spatial differences, urban shrinkage, peripheralization, depopulation, and socioeconomic decline in the post-transition period in Lithuania and CEE countries. She received her doctoral degree in 2014. Currently she is working as postdoc researcher at LSRC dealing with urban shrinkage. Gintarė has experience not only in research, but also as has experience from Brussels with the EU Committee of the Regions. She is the author and coauthor of more than 15 scholarly publications. She has held traineeships in scientific institutions in Hungary and Germany. Currently she is also responsible for administrating the Lithuanian academic journal, Geographical Yearbook (http://demografija.lt/geography.php).