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Abstract. The most common approach to assessing natural hazard risk is investigating the willingness to pay in the presence or absence of such risk. In this work, we propose a new, machine-learning-based, indirect approach to the problem, i.e. through residential-choice modelling. Especially in urban environments, exposure and vulnerability are highly dynamic risk components, both being shaped by a complex and continuous reorganization and redistribution of assets within the urban space, including the (re-)location of urban dwellers. By modelling residential-choice behaviour in the city of Leipzig, Germany, we seek to examine how exposure and vulnerabilities are shaped by the residential-location-choice process. The proposed approach reveals hot spots and cold spots of residential choice for distinct socioeconomic groups exhibiting heterogeneous preferences. We discuss the relationship between observed patterns and disaster risk through the lens of exposure and vulnerability, as well as links to urban planning, and explore how the proposed methodology may contribute to predicting future trends in exposure, vulnerability, and risk through this analytical focus. Avenues for future research include the operational strengthening of these linkages for more effective disaster risk management.

Since the second half of the 20th century, urban shrinkage has become a common pathway of transformation for many large cities across the globe. Although the appearance of shrinkage is fairly universal—typically manifested in dwindling population, emerging vacant spaces, and the underuse of existing urban infrastructure, ranging from schools and parks to water pipelines—its essence is hidden from view. Phenomena related to shrinkage have been discussed predominantly using terms such as decline, decay, blight, abandonment, disurbanization, urban crisis, and demographic change. Amongst others, these concepts were typically related to specific national contexts, installed in distinct explanatory frameworks, based around diverging normative accounts, ultimately leading to very different policy implications. Yet there is still a lack of conceptualization and integration of shrinkage into the wider theoretical debates in human geography, town and country planning, urban and regional studies, and social sciences at large. The problem here is not only to explain how shrinkage comes about, but also to study shrinkage as a process: simultaneously as a presupposition, a medium, and an outcome of continually changing social relationships. If we wish to understand shrinkage in a specific location, we need to integrate theoretical explanations with historical trajectories, as well as to combine these with a study of the specific impacts caused by shrinkage and to analyse the policy environment in which these processes take place. The authors apply an integrative model which maps the entire process across different contexts and independently of local or national specifics; it covers causes, impacts, responses, and feedback loops, and the interrelations between these aspects. The model does not 'explain' shrinkage in every case: instead, it builds a framework into which place-specific and time-specific explanations can be embedded. It is thus a heuristics that enables communication, if not comparison, across different contexts. With the help of this model, the authors hope to find a way in which shrinkage can be studied both in a conceptually rigorous and in an historically specific way. Instead of an invariant 'process of shrinkage', they portray a 'pluralist world of shrinkages'.

Seit einigen Jahren ist in Deutschland eine deutliche Ausdifferenzierung der regionalen Bevölkerungsentwicklung zu beobachten. Das in den 1990er und 2000er Jahren prägende Muster praktisch flächendeckender Einwohnerverluste in den ländlichen Räumen Ostdeutschlands und eines Nebeneinanders von Wachstums- und Schrumpfungsräumen im Westen hat sich seit 2011 gewandelt und ausdifferenziert. Vor diesem Hintergrund möchte der Beitrag die wesentlichen demographischen Trends in Deutschland nach 2011 herausarbeiten und deren Implikationen für die Raumentwicklung diskutieren.

The article examines how the German city of Leipzig governs the housing of asylum seekers. Leipzig was a frontrunner in organizing the decentralized accommodation of asylum seekers when adopting its accommodation concept in 2012. This concept aimed at integrating asylum-seeking persons in the regular housing market at an early stage of arrival. However, since then, the city of Leipzig faces more and more challenges in implementing the concept. This is particularly due to the increasingly tight situation on the housing market while the number of people seeking protection increased and partly due to discriminating and xenophobic attitudes on the side of house owners and managers. Therefore, we argue that the so-called refugee crisis of 2015–2016 has to be seen in close interaction with a growing general housing shortage in Leipzig like in many other large European cities. Furthermore, we understand the municipal governing of housing as a contested field regarding its entanglement of diverse federal levels and policy scales, the diversity of stakeholders involved, and its dynamic change over the last years. We analyze this contested field set against the current context of arrival and dynamic urban growth on a local level. Based on empirical qualitative research that was conducted by us in 2016, Leipzig's local specifics will be investigated under the umbrella of our conceptual framework of Governance of Arrival. The issues of a strained housing market and the integration of asylum seekers in it do not apply only to Leipzig, but shed light on similar developments in other European Cities.

The evolving debate on 'urban shrinkage' mirrors an increasing interest in demographic phenomena on the part of urban scholars. This paper discusses ambiguous evidence about recent population decline in the large cities of Poland and the Czech Republic, with a particular focus on Łódz and Brno in general and their inner cities more specifically. By applying a mixed-method approach, the paper identifies indications of inner-city repopulation and socio-demographic diversification which are not yet apparent in register or census data. It is argued that there are indications of a silent transformation of traditional residential patterns and neighbourhoods in east central Europe. In the inner cities, this is reflected, amongst other things, by the presence of new households that may be called 'transitory urbanites'.

During the last three decades, the countries of the developed world have been engulfed by the 'second demographic transition', which involves new family relations, less and later marriage, declining fertility rates, population ageing, postponement of child-bearing and smaller households, among other trends. It is being increasingly argued that such population dynamics are having a powerful transformative effect on the inner city, by diversifying and redensifying its social landscapes, and creating a 'splintered' urban form. Based on the findings of a recent EU Framework 5 research project, this paper investigates the demographic contingencies of this process-also known as reurbanisation-in four European cities: Leipzig (Germany), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Bologna (Italy) and Leon (Spain). Analyses of census and municipal registry data, as well as on-site questionnaire surveys and interviews, have revealed that the reviewed cities are being populated with, and fragmented by, multiple migration trends and new household structures connected to the second demographic transition.

Soziale Differenzierung ist in den Großstädten Ostdeutschlands zu einem wesentlichen Charakteristikum urbaner Entwicklung, Alltagswahrnehmung und Politik geworden. Insbesondere lässt sich dies in den Städten beobachten, welche nach der Schrumpfung der 1990er-Jahre seit Kurzem wieder dynamisch wachsen. Die Vertiefung sozialer Ungleichheiten (soziale Differenzierung) sowie die Vervielfältigung von Lebensstilen, Lebenswelten und Identitäten (zunehmende Heterogenität) sind Teil dieser Entwicklung. Vor diesem Hintergrund diskutiert der Beitrag soziale Differenzierung und zunehmende Heterogenität der Bevölkerung in Leipzig mit einem Fokus auf Alltagswahrnehmungen der Bewohner sowie der lokalen Politikentwicklung. Es wird analysiert, wie soziale Differenz und zunehmende Heterogenität zu einem Thema im Alltag und für die Politik werden und wie beide Perspektiven in Bezug zueinander stehen. Der Beitrag fußt auf einem mehrdimensionalen Verständnis von Heterogenität einschließlich der sozioökonomischen, demographischen, lebensstilbezogenen und ethnisch-migrantischen Dimensionen. Räumlich gesehen werden sowohl die gesamtstädtische als auch die Quartiersperspektive betrachtet. Die Analyse kommt unter anderem zu dem Ergebnis, dass soziale Heterogenität in ihrer horizontalen Dimension anerkannt und wahrgenommen wird und sich diese Anerkennung auch in der Politikformulierung findet. Das gilt nicht im gleichen Maße für Ausprägungen sozialer Ungleichheit. Das Beispiel Leipzig zeigt überdies, dass der generelle Diskurs stärker differenzieren muss zwischen dem Anliegen, horizontale Differenz (explizit) anzuerkennen, der notwendigen Bekämpfung vertikaler sozialer Ungleichheiten sowie dem Umstand, dass sich aus deren Überschneidung zahlreiche neue Unübersichtlichkeiten und Komplexitäten ergeben. ; Social differentiation has developed to be one of the crucial characteristics of urban development in Eastern Germany's large cities, an issue that is increasingly reflected in daily life perceptions and policy-making. This development can be especially observed in those cities that, after a phase of shrinkage in the 1990s, have seen new growth during the last years. The focus is here on social differentiation that we understand as an increase in social inequalities, and on social heterogeneity that is understood as pluralization of cultural and religious identities, lifestyles and living environments. Set against this background, the paper discusses social differentiation and increasing heterogeneity in Leipzig with a focus on daily life perceptions by the residents and local policy development. It analyses how social difference and increasing heterogeneity have become an issue for daily routines and practices as well as for policy formulation and how both perspectives interact. The paper is based on a multi-dimensional understanding of heterogeneity including the socio-economic, demographic, lifestyle and ethnic-migration dimension. Spatially, both the total city and neighbourhood perspective are in focus. The paper concludes, among others, that social heterogeneity in its horizontal dimension is being recognised and accepted and that this is reflected by policy development as well. This does not apply in the same manner for increasing social inequalities. The example of Leipzig shows, furthermore, that there is a need for more differentiation in the local discourse with respect to the explicit recognition of horizontal difference, the need to counteract vertical social inequalities and the fact that out of the interaction/intersection of both dimensions, a bundle of new equivocalities and complexities emerge.

Soziale Differenzierung ist in den Großstädten Ostdeutschlands zu einem wesentlichen Charakteristikum urbaner Entwicklung, Alltagswahrnehmung und Politik geworden. Insbesondere lässt sich dies in den Städten beobachten, welche nach der Schrumpfung der 1990er-Jahre seit Kurzem wieder dynamisch wachsen. Die Vertiefung sozialer Ungleichheiten (soziale Differenzierung) sowie die Vervielfältigung von Lebensstilen, Lebenswelten und Identitäten (zunehmende Heterogenität) sind Teil dieser Entwicklung. Vor diesem Hintergrund diskutiert der Beitrag soziale Differenzierung und zunehmende Heterogenität der Bevölkerung in Leipzig mit einem Fokus auf Alltagswahrnehmungen der Bewohner sowie der lokalen Politikentwicklung. Es wird analysiert, wie soziale Differenz und zunehmende Heterogenität zu einem Thema im Alltag und für die Politik werden und wie beide Perspektiven in Bezug zueinander stehen. Der Beitrag fußt auf einem mehrdimensionalen Verständnis von Heterogenität einschließlich der sozioökonomischen, demographischen, lebensstilbezogenen und ethnisch-migrantischen Dimensionen. Räumlich gesehen werden sowohl die gesamtstädtische als auch die Quartiersperspektive betrachtet. Die Analyse kommt unter anderem zu dem Ergebnis, dass soziale Heterogenität in ihrer horizontalen Dimension anerkannt und wahrgenommen wird und sich diese Anerkennung auch in der Politikformulierung findet. Das gilt nicht im gleichen Maße für Ausprägungen sozialer Ungleichheit. Das Beispiel Leipzig zeigt überdies, dass der generelle Diskurs stärker differenzieren muss zwischen dem Anliegen, horizontale Differenz (explizit) anzuerkennen, der notwendigen Bekämpfung vertikaler sozialer Ungleichheiten sowie dem Umstand, dass sich aus deren Überschneidung zahlreiche neue Unübersichtlichkeiten und Komplexitäten ergeben.