This book examines a rapidly emerging new topic in urban settlement patterns: the role of shrinking cities. Much coverage is given to declining fertility rates, ageing populations and economic restructuring as the factors behind shrinking cities, but there is also reference to resource depletion, the demise of single-company towns and the micro-location of environmental hazards.The contributions show that shrinkage can occur at any scale ' from neighbourhood to macro-region - and they consider whether shrinkage of metropolitan areas as a.