Urban Shrinkage and the Identification of China’s Shrinking Cities. A study Based on Semi-Industrialized Semi-urbanized Structure

Urban shrinkage has been a remarkable phenomenon in city development, both domestic and foreign, which cannot be convincingly explained by growth theory. This paper studies the theoretical foundation and connotation of urban shrinkage, as well as its internal dynamic mechanism and external spatial mechanism. Thereby reaches the conclusion that both shrinkage and expansion is a natural historical process of the urban development. Compared to the urban shrinkage in highly industrialized countries which features generalizability and regularity, the case in China is quite different due to the under-development of urbanization and industrialization. Therefore we referred to the regularity, and further used internal dynamic mechanism and external spatial mechanism to identify and classify China’s shrinking cities, then discussed several patterns and drives, and finally proposed some policy suggestion and urban planning thoughts for sustainable development regarding various types of urban shrinkage.