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"Sustaining the Shrinking City: Concepts, Dynamics and Management" (A special issue of Sustainability) (ISSN 2071-1050).
Citation:
Shuster, W., A. Mayer, AND A. Garmestani. "Sustaining the Shrinking City: Concepts, Dynamics and Management" (A special issue of Sustainability) (ISSN 2071-1050). Sustainability. MDPI, Basel, Switzerland, 8(9):01-09, (2016).
Impact/Purpose:
We see this special issue as an attractive venue for data-based research on environmental factors as they impact change in the socio-cultural, economic, political, and physiographic features of cities in flux, and applications or evidence of policies that point to factors affecting the sustainability of shrinking cities.
Description:
Sustainability can be broadly defined as the resilient outcome of the interaction among social equity, economic stability, and environmental quality factors. For example, the utilization of natural resource capitals are constrained by economic forces, and further modulated by social norms and perceptions. Nowhere is this more apparent than in cities, where the social, economic and environmental capital within the city and in its supporting region may wax and wane due to internal dynamics and external drivers. These changes may be charted as shifts in land use, the type and qualities of infrastructure, population and its demography, and other characteristics that drive the trajectory of a city toward shrinkage. Our authors will discuss how fluxes of different capitals (social, cultural, financial, technological, natural resources, governance/political) might align or substitute for each other to create conditions in the structure and function of city to attain a sustainable size after undergoing a rapid depopulation. Other authors focus on how the misalignment of capitals can doom a city to shrink uncontrollably, and in combination with shifts in environmental quality, the may destroy a city’s ability to function as an integrative center for social and economic interactions. We see this special issue as an attractive venue for data-based research on environmental factors as they impact change in the socio-cultural, economic, political, and physiographic features of cities in flux, and applications or evidence of policies that point to factors affecting the sustainability of shrinking cities.
