Factors driving the regrowth of European cities and the role of local and contextual impacts: A contrasting analysis of regrowing and shrinking cities

Abstract This paper undertakes a comparison of two regrowing and two shrinking European cities in order to identify the factors driving demographic regrowth and economic recovery of cities and how and why those factors are at work in some cities that turned from population decline towards new growth while others did not. Our objectives are to systematically elaborate the factors that are influencing urban regrowth, explain how these factors interact and are mutually dependent and to discuss how these factors relate to contextual conditions at different scales. For our contrasting analysis, we selected Liverpool and Leipzig, two cities that have seen regrowth after shrinkage and Lodz and Ostrava, two cities that continue to shrink. As a result of this comparison, we identify general local and contextual factors driving regrowth and discuss their interaction and what we learn from this for the wider urbanisation debate.