European small cities and towns: a territorial contextualization of vulnerable demographic situations (1981-2011)

In Europe, 80% of urban settlements may be considered as small cities and towns. Starting from Umz database, we first describe the large heterogeneity of European countries regarding their amount of small entities. These Umz are particularly concerned by a demographic decline between 1981 and 2011, and the subset characterized by population losses is confronted to a more intensive decline than medium and large cities. Using clustering methods, we construct a multi-scalar urban-rural typology that describes seven settlement contexts and a classification of age structure. Results show that small cities and towns are over-represented in rural regions and/or in ageing profiles. If only 50 of them combine population loss, ageing and rural isolation, they are located in one-third of the European countries, and are related to 10% of the French ?départements?, 15% of the Hungarian ?megyeks? and the major part of the Swedish ?län?. JEL classification: J11, N34, N94, R11