At the beginning of the 21st century, the phenomena of shrinking cities spread widely over Europe. Cities shrank in peripheral, sparsely populated areas in Northern Europe, in Western European industrial agglomerations in economic decline, and in rural areas in Southern Europe suffering from...

While the positive effect of market access (MA) on population and economic growth has shown to be robust, the results in the literature were obtained in a context of population growth. This article examines the impact that MA has on a system of cities that has suffered a negative population...