"Landflucht" und "sterbende Städte" : Diskurse über räumliche Schrumpfung in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart

Abstract

Rural and urban population decline have been cyclical topics of public and scientific discourses for decades. This paper sheds light on the different phases of these debates in (Western) Germany, starting in the 1970s. With respect to rural areas, concerns about population decline and its longterm impacts tied in with the older political and normative debate about a "rural exodus" (Landflucht). By the end of the 1970s, but more pronounced from the mid-1980s onwards, processes of urban "shrinkage" came to the fore demanding a new understanding of urban development and planning. Yet, with the political Turnaround in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989/90 and the subsequent changes in migration patterns to and within a reunified Germany, shrinkage was more or less forgotten by the public, although actually occurring in many parts of Eastern Germany. Since 2000, the discourse on urban shrinkage has revived and also led to new planning instruments, while rural population decline and its consequences are being discussed more or less independently. Urban-rural transfers of knowledge and experiences are still lacking.