More and more European cities are confronted with population decline in a structural sense. This development of "urban shrinkage" has different causes, but similar effects: the city's hardware, software and mindware deteriorate. In this paper, we explore and assess policy strategies to respond to urban shrinkage in a European context. Four strategies are identified:(1) trivializing shrinkage, (2) countering shrinkage, (3) accepting shrinkage and (4) utilizing shrinkage. We suggest that accepting shrinkage by improving the quality of life for the city's existing residents is the most suitable and sustainable strategy. Dealing with shrinkage is a complex urban governance process that asks for a mental transformation from growth to shrinkage as well as regional rather than local thinking. Moreover, due to the fiscal burden of shrinkage, city governments will be increasingly dependent on the willingness of citizens to help. Civic engagement, however, is not something that can be simply dictated. Therefore we conclude that the authorities of Europe's shrinking cities should first enable their citizens to care for their community before asking them to do so.

Introduction There is a broad consensus that globalisation and technological change have precipitated the emergence of a new knowledge economy in which economic success is dependent on innovation-based productivity growth (for a review see Temple, 1998). However, there are strong competing arguments over the spatial dynamics and form of this new economy. On the one hand, the ubiquity of ICT (information and communication technology), the dematerialisation of production, and the increasing mobility of factors of production suggest a`death of distance' and the`end of geography' (Cairncross, 1997; Dicken, 1998). On the other hand, the tendency for knowledge capital to agglomerate has produced new megacities dominating global production networks, and a number of highly specialised niche high-technology spaces (Sassen, 1991; Smith, 2003). These totemic new economy spaces manifest success through a combination of many apparent mechanisms such as clusters, dense innovation networks, or territorial knowledge pools (

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