What makes people stay in or leave shrinking cities? An empirical study from Portugal

ABSTRACT

The attractiveness of cities as places to live determines population movements into or out of them. Understanding the appealing features is fundamental to local governments, particularly for cities facing population decline. Pull and push attributes can include economic aspects, the availability of amenities and psychological constructs, initiating a discussion around which factors are more relevant for migration. However, such discussion has been underexplored in studies of shrinking cities. In the present study, we contribute to the discussion by identifying pull and push factors in Portuguese shrinking cities. Data were collected using a face-to-face questionnaire of 701 residents in four shrinking cities: Oporto, Barreiro, Peso da Régua and Moura. Factor analysis and automatic linear modelling were used to analyse the data. Our results show that the economic activity is the most relevant feature for retaining residents. However, characteristics specific to each city, related to heritage and natural beauty, are also shown to influence a city’s attractiveness. The cause of population shrinkage was also found to influence residents’ assessments of the pull and push attributes of each city. Furthermore, the results show the relevance of social ties and of place attachment to inhabitants’ intention to continue living in their city of residence.

KEYWORDS:

• Shrinking cities
• policy and planning strategies
• residents’ preferences
• pull and push factors
• Portugal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Maria Helena Guimarães http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6904-3696

Luis Catela Nunes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8115-6223

Ana Paula Barreira http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5816-3361

Thomas Panagopoulos http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8073-2097

Notes

1. The stratification did not account for possible differences between neighbourhoods within each case study. However, by considering the distribution of households by parishes and household type, the sample is presumed to cover the diversity in the preferences of inhabitants.

2. The respondents of the questionnaire were inhabitants residing in each city at the time of the survey; therefore, we asked those residents about perceived push factors (i.e. what could make them leave the city). The questionnaire does not capture the views of inhabitants who have already left the city.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors and by national funding from the Foundation for Science and Technology under the project [EXPL/ATP-EUR/0464/2013] - ‘Policy guidelines for regeneration in shrinking cities’. Luis Catela Nunes acknowledges support from Nova Forum.