Are cities really shrinking or are suburbs just explanding? Or is technology just making connections between people easier and thus strengthening our connections between people we have never met? Has the amount of times you’ve uttered the phrase ” It’s a such a small world” risen exponentially since Internet use has grown? These are the questions of Shrinking Cities, a research project and think tank to investigate the “problem” of shrinking urban spaces. From the site: “The comparative approach to the shrinking city problem has been neglected up to now and the aim of the study is to give it new impetus. The international investigation is intended to provide a deeper insight into the structures and processes that characterise shrinking urban regions. Roughly speaking, what is happening has to do with de-industrialisation, suburbanisation and post-socialism. Within the process of shrinkage, the loss of places and people, these factors interact with each other to produce consequences that can be far-reaching. ” My question is: Why is this a problem? Seems as if this is an inevitable evolution of urban spaces that will all be swallowed up by sprawl. I don’t see it as a loss, but more of new circumstances that have to be adapted and change alongside this transformation.

This SLIDE project is really cool!