Editorial on the special issue “An International Perspective on the Processes, Patterns, and Outcomes of Reurbanisation”

Abstract

Anyone following the ongoing debate in urban research, policy-making and society about "reurbanisation" or the "renaissance" of big cities will fi nd it hard to imagine that not so long ago, urban futures still had largely negative connotations.In light of seemingly limitless mobility, new communication and information technologies, and changing residential and business location preferences, many commentators regarded high density forms of settlement as signs of a bygone era.It seemed that in a globalised and digitally networked world, there was no more need for traditional forms of urban centrality and agglomeration (Gordon/Cox 2012; Lang/LeFurgy 2003; Dear/Flusty 1998).The future was rather to be found in an urban society without cities.This assessment was fuelled by fl ight from cities to suburbs (which had, in some cases, been ongoing for decades), massive losses of industrial jobs combined with the occurrence of concentrated poverty in inner city areas, and derelict building stocks and infrastructure in many places.In view of this, the population increase that has taken place over the past 20 years in numerous cities of the Global North appears to represent a radical break from these trends.The quantitative dimension of the new urban growth is striking: the fi ve biggest German cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, and Frankfurt) -for example -collectively grew by nearly half a million inhabitants between 2011 and 2015; and, since the mid-2000s, numerous smaller cities also fi nd themselves confronted by new population growth (Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt-und Raumentwicklung 2017; see also Gans in this issue).Similar developments can be seen in other European countries and in the US.Reference can be made here to available cross-sectional analyses of demographic developments in European city-regions and cities (Kabisch/Haase 2010; Turok/Mykhnenko 2008; Wolff/Wiechmann 2017), as well as to studies that illustrate the phenomenon of new urban growth from a national perspective (Randolph/Tice 2017; Juday 2015;

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