PERIPHERALITY, MARGINALITY AND GLOBAL CHANGE: DAUGAVPILS AND THE FUTURE OF PERIPHERAL CITIES

Alan Mallach, B.A., Senior FellowCenter for Community ProgressWashington, DC, USAe-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT Demographic changes, coupled with the effects of climate change and increasing deglobalization, are likely to lead to a world of declining economic growth, with negative effects for peripheral cities and regions, particularly in countries like Latvia experiencing demographic decline. Daugavpils, as a paradigmatic peripheral community, is well suited to explore both the effects of decline and possible strategies by which the city may be able to combat those trends. I describe how Daugavpils is losing population at a rapid pace, and its population is aging as its young people are leaving for greater opportunities elsewhere. It has become economically marginalized in a highly centralized country whose energy is concentrated in the capital city, while being stigmatized by virtue of its ethnic character and seeming geographic isolation. Barring drastic change, the coming decades are likely to see continued population loss and brain drain, along with the erosion of such vitality and energy as the city currently can claim. I ask whether this is inevitable, and argue in these pages that it is not. I suggest some of the features of an alternative future. The path to such a future, however, is a difficult one. Moreover, even if the people of Daugavpils can find the will to upend existing power and status relations in order to make possible a better future, they will still need support and resources from the Latvian government and the EU to make it a reality. Keywords: peripheralization, marginalization, demographic change, aging, localism, participation PDF How to cite: Mallach, A. (2024). “Peripherality, Marginality and Global Change: Daugavpils and the Future of Peripheral Cities.” Journal of Comparative Studies 17 (46), 6-47. https://doi.org/10.59893/jcs.17(46).001