FEUP coordinates European project to revive “shrinking cities

FEUP participates in European project to revive “shrinking cities”

Urban contraction has multiple causes and dimensions and poses important challenges, with regard to life quality, social cohesion and innovation, economic transformation, housing management, infrastructure and public services, reorganization of physical space city and environmental sustainability.

Text: Raquel Pires Photo: reserved rights

The increasing urbanization of populations around the world has not prevented a significant number of cities, in a wide range of contexts, from experiencing persistent processes of population loss, often associated with the decline of their economic base. Known as shrinking cities, recent studies report that this phenomenon affects between 20 and 30% of European cities.

It is in this context that the RE-CITY project has emerged. Receiving 6 million euros of funding from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions within the Horizon 2020 Program, the project is part of the Research Centre for Territory, Transport and Environment (CITTA) at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, bringing together teams from 16 universities , research centres, foundations and companies from Europe, the United States, Mexico and Japan, with extensive experience in understanding this phenomenon. The aim is to study innovative solutions for reviving shrinking cities and to develop an advanced training program for a new generation of planners who can intervene in developing these solutions.

From a comparative and international perspective, combining contributions from different disciplines, the RE-CITY researchers study the way cities deal with the processes of decline and change. They analyse, for example, development concepts, trajectories and alternatives; planning strategies and methodologies, ways of learning, mobilizing different social actors and responding to urban inequalities; modes of infrastructure provision, use of alternative energies, creative transformation of empty spaces; and development strategies integrating culture or migration. They also study the role of other levels - regional, national or transnational - in the configuration and evolution of urban contraction processes.

The intended result of the interaction between these different research topics is a set of concepts, methods and intervention tools, to be applied to planning strategies for shrinking cities. From an educational point of view, RE-CITY integrates 13 doctoral projects and an extensive program of joint activities and student interaction with the project’s academic and non-academic partners.

Expected to end in 2022, RE-CITY has two researchers at FEUP, within the scope of the Doctoral Program in Territory Planning: Olivia Lewis, with a project on green infrastructure and citizen participation in the construction of new perspectives for empty spaces, and Fanny Augis, who studies the management of technical and social infrastructure in shrinking cities.