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Population shrinkage has become an unavoidable process in many cities and calls for new planning approaches. Typically, economic restructuring causes small urban centres in peripheral locations to lose economic functions and population. In small towns however, social capital has been considered as a specific resource. In this article, we focus on small postsocialist towns in Estonia and Central Germany that have mostly experienced severe shrinkage since the end of state socialism, especially during the first transition decade. We aim to clarify to what extent local planning strategies accept the ongoing shrinkage and how various forms of local social capital have contributed to these strategies and the development of the localities in general. Interviews with different stakeholders in selected towns in Estonia and Germany revealed that shrinkage has not been systematically accepted in local planning. Instead, planning is strongly steered by the external financial resources to strengthen the remaining urbanity. In all towns, specific key development niches have been found in the 2000s to compensate for the peripherality. We also demonstrate that local public institutions need to adjust their governance culture to the existing specific local forms of social capital in order to achieve synergy between local actors.

Theoretic discourses and empirical findings related to the process of suburbanisation and the resulting spatial category of suburbia have long been dominated by critical assessments of metropolitan growth, the decline of inner cities and associated problems (with regard to land use, transport, tax distribution). More recently, following the rising significance of sub-and exurban development in North America as well as in Europe, research and planning attitudes towards suburbia have become more pluralistic. It is now more acknowledged that edge urban developments represent a legitimate component of the urban fabric.The new research and planning attitudes about urban outskirts are related to the observation of new urban forms, coined in terms like edge city 1 , post-modern urbanism 2 , post-suburbia 3 , or "Zwischenstadt". 4 Respective discourse points out new qualities in regional development and policy: the spatial category suburbia is no longer only negatively evaluated, but perceived in a differentiated way. It is thus becoming the object of policies and strategies for improvement and further development, rather than that of disregard and negation. In this context, this paper aims at giving a condensed overview of the state and dynamics of the subject, how it is being discussed, and which consequences for research, policy and planning may result from this perspective.5 This paper provides an overview of the state of suburbanisation research in Germany and Europe and also of the theoretical concepts which are put forward -both in Germany and internationally -to deal with it. The spatial category suburbia which resulted from the dynamic suburbanisation processes in the second half of the 20th century is then analysed. In the foreseeable future, stagnation and shrinking phenomena are likely to shape the agenda again. The paper's final section therefore discusses which future perspectives exist for suburbanisation and the further development of suburbia in the context of demographic change and urban shrinkage.

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