Shrinking Cities and the Need for a Reinvented Understanding of the City

With the coming of the Shrinking Cities phenomenon several questions appear in relation to the influences of shrinkage on the city and how we are to understand and work with the Shrinking Cities. The Shrinking Cities phenomenon has to be incorporated into the general assumptions about the contemporary city and maybe the understanding of the city needs to be updated in some areas, before we are able to do so. In this paper, the focus will be directed towards two themes which become present with the Shrinking Cities phenomenon and therefore seems important to discuss in order to understand the concept of Shrinking Cities. These two themes may affect the understanding of the existing city theory. The first theme is concerned with the physical understanding of the city where the traditional assumption about the city as a high density area, with buildings as the dominant structure, is questioned. Here the concept of the city as an urban landscape will be introduced. The second theme points to the need for a discussion regarding the object of our planning when developing the cities. Previously, the purpose of city development has been growth and expansion, but with the Shrinking Cities phenomenon it seems necessary to think of new planning goals.