The aim of the project is to identify and assess the social and spatial consequences of demographic changes in East Central European cities. It highlights and explains parallels and differences in comparison with general European patterns. By considering Polish and Czech cities as examples, the project seeks to show the extent to which scientific concepts based on West European developments and the East German path of transition are transferable to East Central Europe.

As a result, the project will provide systematic, empirically based knowledge about:

similarities and differences of current urban processes in East Central Europe compared with West European patterns

consequences of both quantitative demographic changes (population shrinkage) and qualitative transformations (change of household structures) for urban development in Poland and the Czech Republic

the social, demographic and ethnic structure of inner-city residential areas in Polish and Czech second-order cities

opportunities and limits of a mutual, cross-European transfer of knowledge about and experience of urban change

the extent to which urban research might be enriched by demographic concepts and theories