The starting point for our considerations is related to the special role East Central European cities currently play within urban research:

As places of post-socialist transition they usually remain out of sight in the discourse about the “European city”. Moreover, urban development in Eastern Europe is still considered within the conceptual framework of growth. But reality is departing from this paradigm: also in East Central Europe, urban change is increasingly linked to shrinkage processes brought about by – already observable – quantitative and qualitative demographic changes. Declining birth rates, ageing and changes of household compositions on the one hand and the consequences of inter- and intra-regional mobility on the other hand imprint on urban agglomerations. First trends of shrinkage and housing as well as commercial vacancies are observable.

As for its theoretical approach, the project builds upon theories and results of transition research of the 1990s but aims at expanding the conceptual approach to by now only rarely investigated issues of housing demo-graphics. The main interest of research is on qualitative demographic changes, i.e. changing household structures and related housing preferences as well as their spatial expression; the spatial focus is set on inner-city old built-up residential areas.

The comparison of Polish and Czech development with Western European and East German experiences contributes to a better understanding of these new patterns of urban development in ECE. Concepts developed for Western European contexts like that of the Second Demographic Transition are tested with respect to their applicability. Additionally, the comparative analysis admits for an evaluation of the interplay of postsocialist transition and general trajectories of demographic and urban change in Europe.