Involving small landlords as a regeneration strategy under shrinkage: evidence from two East German cases

ABSTRACT

In light of ongoing shrinkage processes affecting a number of cities and regions in Europe and around the world, the planning literature has suggested a need for new planning concepts and strategies, or even a new planning paradigm. This paper aims to contribute to the debate by investigating the adaptation of the process of urban regeneration to shrinkage. Urban regeneration is a common policy in cities facing population and economic decline. However, particularly for inner-city neighbourhoods, it has not been sufficiently documented how urban regeneration responds to challenges related to shrinkage. Looking first at the evolving national policy framework and then at two local case studies, this paper identifies conditions leading to the emergence of new practices of urban regeneration in inner-city neighbourhoods in Eastern Germany. These practices are characterized by the moderate usage of public subsidies combined with ‘soft’ measures like cooperation with individual property owners and potential investors as well as place marketing.

KEYWORDS:

• Shrinking cities
• planning
• urban regeneration
• inner city
• Eastern Germany

Acknowledgements

The author thanks two anonymous reviewers and Alexander Tölle for suggestions that helped improve this paper. He is also grateful to all the persons who participated in interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Adam Radzimski http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3770-4541

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Centre of Poland [Grant Number DEC-2013/09/D/HS4/00575].