Managing Rural Decline in the 21st Century: Spatial Insights from European Shrinking Regions

Depopulation and urban–rural population redistribution are challenges that reshape settlement patterns, landscapes, and local economies in many regions, from Europe to China and from Japan to North America. This study examines spatial and demographic transformations in the Baltic States (Europe), using Lithuania as a detailed case study. The analysis is based on high-resolution GIS population data derived from official population registers and linked to georeferenced settlement polygons for the years 2011 and 2021, combined with a linear projection of population change to 2026 (five-year period). The results reveal that population decline, which appears modest at the aggregated statistical level (approximately −1.1% to −1.5% per year), is territorially concentrated and reaches 45–48% in the most affected areas, which can only be identified through fine-scale spatial analysis. The most pronounced decline (−46%) is observed in the population of detached rural dwellings between 2011 and 2021, with trend-based estimation indicating that vacant rural houses may exceed 50% by 2026. At the same time, peri-urban zones surrounding the largest cities show clear population growth, largely driven by internal migration from ageing urban districts, smaller towns, and peripheral rural areas, compensating aggregated values and masking underlying processes. The findings reveal a dual process of rural shrinkage and suburban expansion, increasing pressures on territorial cohesion, service provision, infrastructure planning, and the preservation of cultural landscapes. The application of high-resolution spatial data allows the detection of localized demographic processes that remain insufficiently captured in conventional municipality-level statistics and that have rarely been analyzed at this level of spatial detail. Based on these results, this study emphasizes policy approaches such as adaptive rural regeneration and managed shrinkage. Although the empirical analysis is focused on Lithuania, the identified trends are relevant to many shrinking regions worldwide and may be reproduced using local population register data in other countries to support evidence-based regional planning.