Suburbanisation and Suburbanisms – Making Sense of Continental European Developments

Abstract

This paper provides a brief overview of recent developments and debates concerned with suburbanisation in continental Europe. While current discourses in urban research and practice still focus on processes of reurbanisation and the gentrification of inner-city areas, suburbia continues to exist and thrive. Depending on the definition applied, suburban areas still attract a large share of in-migration and employment growth in cities of the developed countries. Given that popular meta-narratives on suburbia and suburbanisation are often spurred by, or refer to, North American suburban studies, we take a different perspective here, one based on continental European trajectories of development in and across city-regional areas that are considered to be suburban, and on social processes that are associated with suburbanisation (suburbanisms). Thus, we aim to avoid a biased understanding of suburbia as a spatial category, which is often considered mono-functional, non-sustainable, or in generic decline. Instead, we observe that suburban variety is huge, and the distinction between urban core and fringe seems to be as ambiguous as ever. The paper, which also introduces the theme of this special issue of “Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning”, bundles our findings along four themes: on suburbia as a place of economic development, on the shifting dynamics of housing between core and fringe locales, on the life-cyclic nature of suburbanisation, and on strategies for redevelopment. Finally, we discuss certain topics that may deserve to be addressed by future research, particularly on the European variant of suburbanisation and suburbs.

The Geography of Borrowing Size: Exploring Spatial Distributions for German Urban Regions

“…For regional policies and policy measures, it is important to be able to identify and classify the phase and spatial shape of regional developments to adapt the right kind of urban policy (Dijkstra et al ). In the future, small and medium cities in the surrounding should play a specific role for urban re‐development and planning policies (Hesse & Siedentop ).…”

Regional Urbanisation through Accessibility?—The “Zweite Stammstrecke” Express Rail Project in Munich

“…Suburbanisation describes the separation of residential location and workplace by a relocation of the residence from an urban core to a less densely populated area in the surroundings [5]. Models that explain suburbanisation with transport costs have a long tradition in spatial sciences.…”

“…Complex and atypical work mobility, especially reverse commuting to suburban workplaces and long-distance commuting between centres, are on the rise [14][15][16]. Still, real estate rental and purchase prices remain the highest in urban centres compared to their surroundings, at least in most European cities, which is why students, young professionals, high-earners and creatives are so far the main protagonists of re-urbanisation [5,17]. Re-urbanisation also does not necessarily mean a change of lifestyles compared to "suburbia" in terms of dwelling type or mobility, as the examples of "inner-city suburbanization" described by Frank [18] show.…”

“…In the long run, this can give rise to polycentric mega-regions [39] with multiple employment centres and dispersed commuter relations, often difficult for public transport to serve. However, European edge cities are found to have not (yet) reached the size and importance of their American counterparts [5], also due to the greater role of public transport, whose sunk costs exert a preserving influence for existing centres. Even larger shopping outlets are increasingly looking for inner-city locations again as consumer behaviour changes [40].…”

“…It seems hence that despite similar tendencies [2], the dissolution of urban and suburban in "regional urbanisation" as described by Soja [1] for the US might not be fully adequate for the European context [41]. Rather, "classical" residential suburbanisation still plays a major role [4,5], albeit in parallel to a selective re-urbanisation to the traditional cores [42], while agglomeration economies mean an increased concentration of employment. Polycentric regions, where they have emerged, more commonly resulted from an already existing urban pattern of cities with similar size and in greater proximity to each other with the advances of transport technology.…”