Housing and Built Environment in Shrinking Cities: The Role of Housing Vacancies

Housing and built environment in shrinking cities: the role of housing vacancies

Dieter Rink¹, Annegret Haase¹, Chris Couch², Robert Krzysztofik³, Katrin Großmann¹

Contact: dieter.rink@ufz.de

1 Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig (Germany)

2 John-Moores-University, Liverpool (UK)

3 Silesian University, Katowice (Poland)

Across Europe, since the late 20th century, urban shrinkage has become a normal pathway of urban development for many cities. Shrinkage results in a mismatch between supply and demand of built structures, urban space and infrastructure. Urban shrinkage impacts on almost all areas of urban life, one of them is on housing markets and the built environment. Typical for shrinking cities is a situation of disinvestment, since revenues from investments in housing are uncertain or improbable. The consequences of disinvestment in housing markets are undermaintenance, lacking modernization, housing vacancies and abandonment with subsequent physical decay. Mostly this concerns not the whole territory of a shrinking city, but distinct areas. What areas of a city are affected is dependent from the specifities of the respective local markets, the same is true for the concrete impacts on the built environment. The paper addresses specific problems related to vacancies, how they are perceived, what are typical impacts on the affected neighbourhoods and what are strategies to deal with.  

Based on the European project “Shrink Smart”, different shrinking cities in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe will be dealt with related to different housing markets. The paper draws on research undertaken within the EU 7 FP project SHRINK SMART (04/09-04/12; grant agreement no. 225193; www.shrinksmart.eu). The paper uses empirical evidence from Liverpool (UK), Leipzig (Germany) and Bytom (Poland).