New Trends in European Urbanization

Abstract

The study discussed in this article specifically set out to ask whether recent American urban trends—de— concentration, growth of nonmetropolitan areas, stagnation or decline of larger urban areas, and regional shifts from frostbelt to sunbelt—had any parallels in Europe. The conclusion is that, overall, Europe does not offer many parallels except for an increasing tendency to core-ring decentralization. There is no movement to nonmetropolitan areas, except in France during the early 1970s, and indeed until that time some countries still tended to centralize their urban populations. The industrial heartland has continued to grow, and while the European sunbelt has also grown rapidly, the causes are different from those operating in the United States. Finally, in much of Europe—although not in Great Britain, the country where the trends are most like the American ones—larger urban areas have tended to show vigorous growth.