Determinants of Urban Shrinkage in Small-Sized Cities: A Path Analysis of Demographic Decline in Harsin, Iran

Abstract Urban shrinkage has emerged as a relevant theme in recent urban scholarship, with growing intellectual interest since the start of the twenty-first century. The process, characterized by concomitant population decline and economic downturn, is driven by global and local forces such as economic globalization, deindustrialization, suburbanization, and political–institutional reform. While extensive research in developed countries has explored its causes and consequences, studies in developing contexts, particularly in small cities, remain limited. This study examines urban shrinkage in the small Iranian town of Harsin (Iran) that experienced a loss of roughly 20% of its population over two decades with the aim of identifying dominant drivers through direct and indirect causal relationships and proposing mitigation strategies. In this study, spatial and descriptive analyses were carried out on 15 social, economic, physical, and infrastructural indicators at the neighborhood scale, using GIS-based overlay techniques. To further examine the mechanisms underlying population decline, path analysis with a backward elimination regression procedure was employed to trace both the direct and indirect determinants of urban shrinkage in Harsin (Iran) during the period 2011–2016. Four direct predictors include (1) homeownership rates, (2) unemployment, (3) rental housing share, and (4) property values, while seven indirect factors, such as aging populations (more than 65 years old), male labor participation, employment status, small-sized housing (less than 75 m 2 ), building age, nonreinforced construction materials, and net migration, operate through mediating variables. Unemployment emerged as the strongest direct predictor (coefficient = 4.491), whereas property values showed the weakest association (coefficient = 0.290). The combined-effects model underscores unemployment’s dominant role (total coefficient = −5.87), with high-unemployment neighborhoods experiencing acute population loss. These findings highlight the urgency of targeted policy interventions, particularly in employment and housing, to address urban shrinkage in small cities. Finally, based on these findings, a set of goals, objectives, strategies, and policies is proposed to mitigate urban shrinkage, with implications for urban planning in similar small-scale cities in developing countries.