Intraregional Spatial Dynamics of Quality of Life in Shrinking Cities and Their Suburbs

ABSTRACT

American shrinking cities have long been characterized by the flight of residents to their surrounding suburbs. However, recently there has been increasing evidence of the ‘comeback’ of former declining industrial cities. This paper examines the intraregional spatial dynamics of quality of life to determine if there is a difference between shrinking cities and their surrounding suburbs. We found shrinking suburban areas to be most in need of planning intervention as they had lower education and physician density than the central shrinking cities, but higher crime rates and inequality than growing suburban areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Shrinking cities
• quality of life
• urban-suburban divide

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).