ABSTRACT
The environmental impacts and the environmental benefits and costs of shrinkage at the city-level are multifaceted and often highly context-specific. Moreover, the type and level of these benefits and costs does not only depend on city or region-specific factors, but equally on the varying influence of public policy. Shrinkage is often associated with economic decline or even a collapse of the established industries of a city and leads to an expansion of brownfields. The environmental costs of brownfields are most severe in shrinking cities that were historically characterized by highly space and pollution-intensive industry like coal mining. Brownfield development is often considered as a sustainable land-use strategy and as a means of increasing urban density by substituting the greenfields for brownfields. Shrinkage is also associated with open land and oftentimes abandoned properties. While this is not per se beneficial in environmental terms, targeted greening strategies offer many benefits for shrinking cities.
