dc.description.abstract | Demographic and economic shrinkage has become a common trend in the current urbanisation
environment, especially for small cities in developed countries. The desired socio-economic
redevelopment of these cities has been significantly affected by the functional, organisational, financial,
and professional constraints caused by both shrinkage and city size. Paradoxically, this slow
development has enabled better preservation of their historic cores, urban heritage, and traditional
culture. Nevertheless, the aforementioned local constraints have a profound impact on sustainable
urban regeneration, and successful examples are still quite rare. This research presents an inspiring
case—a small museum quarter in Sombor, Serbia. Museum quarters are a relatively new concept in
culture-led urban regeneration; all known examples are located in big cities. Hence, this research
tries to create an innovative methodological link between two theoretical fundaments: the role of
cultural heritage in shrinking small cities and its expression through a museum quarter as one of the
concepts of culture-led urban regeneration. An analytical framework for the aforementioned single
case study is derived by forming this link. The main findings underline that the museum quarters in
shrinking small cities should be developed in a micro-format to rationally address and the limited
local resources. Furthermore, in contrast to museum quarters in big cities, they should be physically
detached from the main retail street to enhance their separate identity and should be internally
balanced in both spatial and functional aspects, meaning that the key museum/cultural institutions
are equally dispersed throughout the quarter and clearly interconnected by a pedestrian-friendly
open public space. | sr |