Dealing with Shrinking Cities through Urban Design

Abstract

This paper aims to clarify the role of urban design as a tool to redevelop demographically and economically shrinking cities, which are becoming more and more frequent across the world. Traditionally, scholars and practitioners position urban planning, the second “pillar” of urbanism, as the main tool to deal with the problems caused by urban shrinkage. Despite this widespread opinion, urban design cannot be omitted in urban policies for shrinking cities, but its role is still insufficiently defined. Therefore, this paper is the review of the theoretical knowledge and the best practice about the potential of urban design to redevelop shrinking cities and its parts. To properly define this role, urban design is compared with urban planning. Final results from the comparison determine how the role of urban design can be further improved in this process.