What is Shrinkage

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the empirical-theoretical approaches to shrinking cities in Mexico. The study of tendencies in economic and environmental shrinkage is tied to the expressions of substantive changes in the complexity of determinant contexts of internal and migration flows. The method used is the critical analysis of economic, social, and political tendencies in relation to the situation of shrinking cities in Mexico. The results of this analysis led to the finding that the shrinkage process in Mexico, as a developing and emerging economy, does not follow the same patterns of well developed countries, where an increase in shrinking cities has occurred since the middle of the 1950s, and the use of incentives in some localities to attract economic growth have had modest success to turn around the shrinking process. Further research on shrinking cities should be done in Mexico. Finally, this chapter analyzes some of the important issues and problems that are important to set an agenda for future research in Mexico.