ABSTRACT
Postsocialist Europe is a “mosaic” of different pathways of urban development, including the process of shrinkage. This chapter offers a brief general overview of the history and conditions of urban shrinkage as well as of the situation of postsocialist shrinking cities in selected countries of Central-Eastern Europe (Czechia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia) and South-Eastern Europe (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia). It also underpins two points highlighted in our book, which can be summarized as follows: country-specific context matters in explaining the processes of urban shrinkage; and shrinking cities in postsocialist countries should not be fully compared to those of western countries in theory building. Finally, a comparison between the two parts of postsocialist Europe with regard to the scale and predominant determinants of urban shrinkage is presented.
