Apparent and actual depopulation of medium-sized cities of the transborder region of podkarpackie voivodship

Abstract

As the demographic potential of the city is not only determined by the population living within its administrative borders, research into depopulation processes of urban centres should also take into account changes in their functional areas. The article proposes a method of classifying depopulation cities into centres depopulating apparently (relatively) and actually (absolutely) and whose main differentiating criterion is the degree of advancement of suburbanization processes. The research was carried out in nine medium-sized cities of the Podkarpackie Voivodship in the time covering the years 1996–2016. The conducted analysis showed that absolute depopulation did not concern all examined centres, despite the decrease in the number of inhabitants in each city.