The urban reality of Serbia at the beginning of the 21st century: Demographic aspect

Abstract

With more than half the world's population living in cities, the 21st century is known as the urban century. However, in an urbanized world that goes hand in hand with a growing world population, a "silent" process of urban shrinkage has occurred for some time. In the first decades after the Second World War, the decline of cities was initially limited to the old urbanized regions of the world. In the late 20th and early 21st century, it spread to developing countries and has become a global phenomenon. The Serbian urban population grew from the 1960s to the 1980s, and stagnating in the 1990s. Complex spatial-demographic and socio-economic changes during the post-socialist transition have determined the demographic development of urban settlements in Serbia towards shrinkage. At the beginning of the 21st century, the urban population in Serbia has slightly decreased and the disproportions in population development between urban settlements have deepened, reinforcing the previously existing urban polarization. In the last decade, a negative average annual rate of change in the urban population in Serbia was recorded. As a result, more than 80% of urban settlements in Serbia are affected by urban shrinkage. The paper analyses the development of the total population in 167 urban settlements in Serbia from 1961 to 2022. The paper aims to identify trends in population dynamics in Serbia, focusing on the phenomenon of urban shrinkage in the 21st century.