Urban Shrinkage as a Challenge to Local Development Planning in Slovakia

Abstract

The demographic characteristics of "shrinking" processes in large Slovak cities, as well as the awareness of such shrinkage processes in local development planning, is the subject of this article. Population loss, together with other demographic indicators, clearly documents such a trajectory in urban development. In spite of this reality, there is only limited reflection of the "shrinking" in planning documents of cities approved by town councils. Some reasons for this decreased sensitivity to the complex problem of shrinking cities include missing relevant information (e.g. demographic prognoses), the milder forms of "shrinking" in Slovakia, the absence of political acceptance of the process by local elites, and the dominant-growth oriented planning practices.