ABSTRACT
Shrinking cities face population losses and, at the same time, they are undergoing economic transformation with some symptoms of a structural crisis, while an opposite development appears to be the case of well-performing cities. This chapter aims at briefly investigating the parallelism of demographic development and economic change in twenty selected large German cities since 1995. According to Hollander et al, Germany has devoted more intellectual and policy energy to shrinking cities than is the case in the United States or France. Cottbus is the city that suffered most seriously from the decline in population, while its economic decline was less significant at 2 per cent. Based on the population data and the real gross value added (GVA) data on the city level for the period between 1995 and 2007, this study examines the parallelism of demographic development and economic change in twenty selected large German cities and identifies which of them can be classified as shrinking cities.
