Measuring the Extent and Patterns of Urban Shrinkage for Small Towns Using R

Abstract:

Urban shrinking is a phenomenon as common as urban expansion nowadays and it affects urban settlements of all sizes, especially from developed and industrialized countries in Europe, America and Asia. The paper aims to assess the patterns of shrinkage for small and medium sized towns in Oltenia region (Romania), considering demographic, economic and social indicators with a methodological approach which considers the use of different functions and applications of R packages. Thirteen selected indicators are analysed to perform the multivariate analysis on Principal Component Analysis using the prcomp() function and the ggplot2 package to visualize the patterns of urban shrinkage. Two composite indicators were additionally created to measure the extent of urban shrinkage: CSI (Composite Shrinking Index) and RDC (Regional Demographic Change) for two-time intervals. Based on the CSI, three major categories of shrinking were observed: persistent shrinkage, mild shrinking or slow evolution toward shrinking, where the vast majority of towns are found (including mining towns, where there still is a delayed restructuring of state-owned enterprises, and towns characterised by the agrarization of local economies), and stagnant/stabilized shrinkage.

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Published

June 20, 2022

Received

Oct 30, 2020

DOI

10.32614/RJ-2022-004

Volume

Pages

14/1

123 - 136

Supplementary materials

Supplementary materials are available in addition to this article. It can be downloaded at RJ-2022-004.zip

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    Citation

    For attribution, please cite this work as

    Vîlcea, et al., "The R Journal: Measuring the Extent and Patterns of Urban Shrinkage for Small Towns Using R", The R Journal, 2022

    BibTeX citation

    @article{RJ-2022-004,
      author = {Vîlcea, Cristiana and Popescu, Liliana and Clincea, Alin},
      title = {The R Journal: Measuring the Extent and Patterns of Urban Shrinkage for Small Towns Using R},
      journal = {The R Journal},
      year = {2022},
      note = {https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2022-004},
      doi = {10.32614/RJ-2022-004},
      volume = {14},
      issue = {1},
      issn = {2073-4859},
      pages = {123-136}
    }