Des petites villes davantage touchées par la décroissance ? Comparaison des trajectoires démographiques à l’échelle européenne (1961-2011)

Abstract

Cities under 50,000 inhabitants represent almost 75 percent of European built-up urban areas and constitute essential nodes of the European space. However, metropolization processes raise the question of the future of these small cities in the long term. Within the framework of a comparative approach based on a harmonized database (TRADEVE), this paper aims at exploring the demographic trajectories of small towns regarding the regional settlement patterns in which they are located. The two methods used for understanding the longitudinal dimension of such trajectories converge and highlight a relative over-representation of a structural, regular and historical decay in isolated rural areas. Nevertheless, this same trend concerns, in absolute value, a very significant number of small towns in dense and urban regions facing a difficult industrial reconversion and/or an ageing population, particularly in Western Europe.

Keywords

• small cities
• decay
• Europe
• comparative approach
• optimal matching