By Aurambout, J.P., Schiavina, M., Melchiori, M., Fioretti, C., Guzzo, F., Vandecasteele, I., Proietti, P., Kavalov, B., Panella, F. and Koukoufikis, G.
Over the course of history, cities, influenced by various historical, social, economic, demographic or political factors, have gone through cycles of growth and decline. While the world population has been increasing and is continuing to concentrate in cities, the idea that all cities are continuously growing is false. As population ages and fertility rates fall or as the result of outmigration, an increasing number of cities are shrinking, particularly in the USA, Europe and Japan but also in the developing world. In fact, shrinking may well become the new normal for many cities and the populations that inhabit them. Shrinking is a complex process that affects multiple aspects from the physical structure of the city to its social and demographic fabric.