Browsing by Author "Nunes, Luis Catela"
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- Residents' preferred policy actions for shrinking citiesPublication . Guimarães, Maria Helena; Nunes, Luis Catela; Barreira, Ana Paula; Panagopoulos, ThomasCities facing a continued and prolonged process of population decline require innovative urban regeneration policies complementary to growth-oriented policies. Losing inhabitants involves a decrease in economic activity and social capital. Therefore citizens' participation in defining policies to cope with population decline is being increasingly advocated. This research focused on four shrinking cities of Portugal to capture residents' knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of their city of residence as well as the policies and actions they prioritized for dealing with the population decline. The responses from 701 questionnaires show that economic revival policies as well as safety and accessibility policies were preferred. To put these policies into action, the recovery of industrial activity, the creation of business incubators, an improvement in law enforcement, and public lighting were ranked as top priorities. Rank-ordered logistic regression models were used to understand which variables influenced the residents' rankings. We found that the evaluation of the city's characteristics impact the ranking of the policies and actions. Hence, residents show a high level of coherence when engaging in a discussion at the level of policy-making. Therefore, the findings support residents' involvement in decision-making processes regarding urban regeneration in shrinking cities.
- Satisfied but thinking about leaving: the reasons behind residential satisfaction and residential attractiveness in shrinking Portuguese citiesPublication . Barreira, Ana; Nunes, Luis Catela; Guimaraes, Maria Helena; Panagopoulos, ThomasCreating liveable cities is a policy priority, especially for cities that are experiencing population loss. A decline in the number of inhabitants is commonly associated with low levels of residential satisfaction. However, such a supposition does not often find empirical support in shrinking cities. In the present study, we identify variables that influence the level of residential satisfaction, as well as those influencing residential attraction (captured by the intention of current residents to leave their city in the near future). The study is based on a face-to-face questionnaire administered to 701 residents in four shrinking Portuguese cities. As expected, lower levels of residential satisfaction lead to an increased intention to leave the city. The results also show that the variables explaining residential satisfaction mostly differ from those explaining residential attractiveness. The specific characteristics of each city influence citizens' assessment of residential satisfaction, but the variables impacting residential attractiveness are universal.
- What makes people stay in or leave shrinking cities? An empirical study from PortugalPublication . Guimarães, Maria Helena; Nunes, Luis Catela; Barreira, Ana Paula; Panagopoulos, ThomasThe attractiveness of cities as places to live determines population movements into or out of them. Understanding the appealing features is fundamental to local governments, particularly for cities facing population decline. Pull and push attributes can include economic aspects, the availability of amenities and psychological constructs, initiating a discussion around which factors are more relevant for migration. However, such discussion has been underexplored in studies of shrinking cities. In the present study, we contribute to the discussion by identifying pull and push factors in Portuguese shrinking cities. Data were collected using a face-to-face questionnaire of 701 residents in four shrinking cities: Oporto, Barreiro, Peso da Regua and Moura. Factor analysis and automatic linear modelling were used to analyse the data. Our results show that the economic activity is the most relevant feature for retaining residents. However, characteristics specific to each city, related to heritage and natural beauty, are also shown to influence a city's attractiveness. The cause of population shrinkage was also found to influence residents' assessments of the pull and push attributes of each city. Furthermore, the results show the relevance of social ties and of place attachment to inhabitants' intention to continue living in their city of residence.