Urban shrinkage is not a new phenomenon. It has been documented in a large literature analyzing the social and economic issues that have led to population flight, resulting, in the worse cases, in the eventual abandonment of blocks of housing and neighbourhoods. Analysis of urban shrinkage should take into account the new realization that this phenomenon is now global and multidimensional — but also little understood in all its manifestations. Thus, as the world's population increasingly becomes urban, orthodox views of urban decline need redefinition. The symposium includes articles from 10 urban analysts working on 30 cities around the globe. These analysts belong to the Shrinking Cities International Research Network (SCIRN), whose collaborative work aims to understand different types of city shrinkage and the role that different approaches, policies and strategies have played in the regeneration of these cities. In this way the symposium will inform both a rich diversity of analytical perspectives and country-based studies of the challenges faced by shrinking cities. It will also disseminate SCIRN's research results from the last 3 years.

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Suburban shrinkage, understood as a degenerative urban process stemming from the demise of the Fordist mode of urbanism, is generally manifested in a decline in population, industry and employment. It is also intimately linked to the global restructuring of industrial organization associated with the rise of the post-Fordist mode of urbanism and, more recently, the thrust of Asian industrialization. Framed in the discourse of industrial urbanism, this article examines the first ring of industrial suburbs that developed around large cities in their most rapid Fordist urbanization phase. These industrial suburbs, although they were formed at different times, are today experiencing specific mutations and undergoing profound restructuring on account of their particular spatial position between the central area and the expanding peripheries of the post-Fordist metropolis. This article describes and compares suburban decline in two European cities (Glasgow and Paris) and two Latin American Cities (São Paulo, Brazil and Guadalajara, Mexico), as different instances of places asymmetrically and fragmentarily integrated into the geography of globalization.

Le déclin des villes n’est pas un phénomène récent. De nombreux travaux ont analysé les causes et les manifestations de ce processus, inséparable de l’histoire des villes. Si, jusqu’aux années soixante-dix, le déclin urbain était l’apanage quasi exclusif des pays développés, depuis les années quatre-vingt-dix, le nombre de villes en déclin atteint à l’échelle mondiale plus du quart des villes de plus de 100000 habitants, témoignant d’un modèle internationalisé de Shrinking Cities . Alors que les processus de déclin urbain ont pris à la fois une ampleur croissante et de nouvelles formes, inscrivant ce phénomène dans une dynamique de plus en plus globale, leur étude peut être l’occasion d’un changement de paradigme par rapport aux analyses traditionnelles de la croissance et du changement urbain. Tandis que le contexte contemporain de mondialisation s’accompagne d’une accentuation et d’un renouvellement des formes de désindustrialisation et de suburbanisation, comme d’un profond changement démographique dans les pays développés, la croissance urbaine n’a plus rien d’acquis tandis que le déclin urbain, loin d’être une exception ou une aberration, peut être analysé comme un phénomène potentiellement global.