Coping with peripheralization in small cities. What is the role of human agency?

The growing process of metropolization has revealed its flip side in the last decade in the form of increasing social problems in peripheral regions. Through a comparative study of two structurally similar small cities in the Czech peripheral region, this paper explains different population trajectories as well as diverging competitive and foundational economies. Based on the original data collected during extensive fieldwork in the Moravian-Silesian Region, the paper uncovers a dualistic relationship between different types of human agency and its structural context as the key determinant, explaining the different developments. The agency of public providers (in contrast to private providers) in the foundational economy has buffered the impact of peripheralization on the well-being of residents, while the agency of companies in the competitive economy has had a major impact on path development and demographic change.