TY - JOUR

T1 - The Relation of Diverging Urban Growth Processes and Demographic Change along an Urban-Rural Gradient

AU - Kroll, Franziska

AU - Kabisch, Nadja

PY - 2012/5

Y1 - 2012/5

N2 - Demographic change is a phenomenon that first appeared in developed, industrialised societies in Europe. It is characterised by a decreasing, ageing, and increasingly individualised population. Apart from its widely discussed consequences for social systems at the national level, demographic change has spatially differentiated impacts on residential, traffic, and technical infrastructure as well as on resource and land consumption. In order to handle these impacts adequately and timely, the acquisition of knowledge of the spatial distribution of demographic developments is of major importance. Although studies on rather broad scales do exist in Germany, comparable results on a small-scale level that describe particular urban-rural developments are still rare. We aim at bridging that gap by presenting a method that allows for a small-scale comparison of urban-rural demographic, housing, and urban area dynamics in four different case studies that include growing and shrinking urban regions in Germany. By calculating and comparing urban-rural gradients in two points in time (1995 and 2005), we identify the differences and the similarities in the selected features of demographic change against two diverging urban trajectories. The results show that not only the shrinking urban regions but also the growing urban regions are impacted by demographic change. The spatial and temporal dynamics along the gradient curve, however, develop non-linearly and more heterogeneously in the two shrinking cities, indicating that small-scale changes are of major importance here. One similarity of all the four city regions is the increase of urban area regardless of population growth or decline.

AB - Demographic change is a phenomenon that first appeared in developed, industrialised societies in Europe. It is characterised by a decreasing, ageing, and increasingly individualised population. Apart from its widely discussed consequences for social systems at the national level, demographic change has spatially differentiated impacts on residential, traffic, and technical infrastructure as well as on resource and land consumption. In order to handle these impacts adequately and timely, the acquisition of knowledge of the spatial distribution of demographic developments is of major importance. Although studies on rather broad scales do exist in Germany, comparable results on a small-scale level that describe particular urban-rural developments are still rare. We aim at bridging that gap by presenting a method that allows for a small-scale comparison of urban-rural demographic, housing, and urban area dynamics in four different case studies that include growing and shrinking urban regions in Germany. By calculating and comparing urban-rural gradients in two points in time (1995 and 2005), we identify the differences and the similarities in the selected features of demographic change against two diverging urban trajectories. The results show that not only the shrinking urban regions but also the growing urban regions are impacted by demographic change. The spatial and temporal dynamics along the gradient curve, however, develop non-linearly and more heterogeneously in the two shrinking cities, indicating that small-scale changes are of major importance here. One similarity of all the four city regions is the increase of urban area regardless of population growth or decline.

KW - Demographic indicators

KW - Housing indicators

KW - Urban decline

KW - Urban growth

KW - Urban-rural gradient

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84857803830&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/psp.653

DO - 10.1002/psp.653

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84857803830

VL - 18

SP - 260

EP - 276

JO - Population, space and place

JF - Population, space and place

SN - 1544-8444

IS - 3

ER -