Satisfied but thinking about leaving: the reasons behind residential satisfaction and residential attractiveness in shrinking Portuguese cities

Cities That Are Losing Inhabitants: An Analysis of the Brazilian Reality

“…Nevertheless, it does not mean that the city losing its inhabitants will inevitably disappear, nor does it mean that it will be able to reverse this situation (Power, Plöger, & Winkler, 2010;Panagopoulos & Barreira, 2012;Haase, Wolff, & Rink, 2018). Thus, the factors of attraction and repulsion of cities are decisive in the behavior of population dynamics (Barreira, Nunes, Guimarães, & Panagopoulos, 2019).…”

“…Therefore, cities with a higher degree of economic development attract the young and adult population more because they possess better conditions and access to employment (Barreira, Ramalho, Panagopoulos, & Guimarães 2017;Wolff, Fol, Roth, & Cunningham-Sabot, 2017). The degree of attractiveness of the most economically developed cities is of particular importance in the context of population decrease, because young people tend to leave the less attractive cities early, when compared with the elderly, thus perpetuating the cycle of decline (Ubarevičienė & van Ham, 2017;Barreira et al, 2019;Haacke, Enßle, Haase, Helbrecht, & Lakes, 2019). In Brazil, economic factors are the main cause for the loss of city inhabitants.…”

Comparing the quality of life of cities that gained and lost population: An assessment with DEA and the Malmquist index

“…The study of shrinking cities has been less frequent in the Southern European countries when compared with the northern ones (Martinez-Fernandez et al, 2016) and only recently has the phenomenon been studied in Portugal. The research of the Portuguese shrinking cities has covered conceptual approaches (e.g., Sousa, 2010;Sousa & Pinho, 2015) and empirical approaches, being the latter mainly focused on the identification of the reasons explaining the migration of inhabitants (e.g., Barreira, Agapito, et al, 2017;Barreira et al, 2019;Barreira, Ramalho, et al, 2017;Guimarães et al, 2016b) and on the policies preferred and implemented in those cities (e.g., Guimarães et al, 2016a;Panagopoulos & Barreira, 2012). The findings for the Portuguese shrinking cities highlight that the individuals who decided to stay value the existing attributes of their cities; however, the lack of employment, or of certain public facilities, impels individuals to find another place to live.…”

“…Despite the relevance of the topic to several European countries, much of the literature refers to the German and British cases and, more recently, to Eastern countries (Martinez‐Fernandez et al, ); meaning that Southern European countries are less studied, including the Portuguese case. The study of the Portuguese shrinking cities has, however, been recently capturing the attention of researchers and the interest for this issue is increasing (e.g., Alves, Barreira, Guimarães, & Panagopoulos, ; Barreira, Agapito, Panagopoulos, & Guimarães, ; Barreira, Nunes, Guimarães, & Panagopoulos, ; Barreira, Ramalho, Panagopoulos, & Guimarães, ; Guimarães, Nunes, Barreira, & Panagopoulos, , ; Panagopoulos & Barreira, ; Panagopoulos, Guimarães, & Barreira, ; Sousa, ; Sousa & Pinho, ). Despite this interest, it remains unanswered how the QoL of cities that faced population decline compares with that of the cities that gained population.…”

Creating Green Space Sustainability through Low-Budget and Upcycling Strategies

“…According to Loures et al [42], the rapid growth of Algarve cities creates challenges and urban parks play an important role in sustainable city development. The demographic challenge was another important factor to find the appropriate policies to maintain the city attractiveness and residential satisfaction [43][44][45]. The city of Faro almost doubled its population the last three decades but without subsequent investment in green infrastructure, which is now as low as 8 m 2 /resident [39].…”