Spatiotemporal pattern evolution and influencing factors of shrinking cities: Evidence from China

Abstract The city shrinkage characterized by population loss has provided new challenges to the traditional ‘growth’ focused on by urban planners and policy makers. Since China has undergone a stage of scale expansion and overall growth, the country's city shrinkage crisis has not attracted sufficient academic attention. The paper studies the spatiotemporal differentiation and influencing factors of China's shrinking cities by constructing a decision model of the shrinking city. The results show that although growth is still the main theme of city development in China. Shrinkage or potential shrinkage has gradually also emerged as prominent, and showing certain spatial agglomeration distribution characteristics. Socioeconomic development, urban environment, urban space scale and population development were also found jointly to affect city shrinkage. These research conclusions provide a reference point for the government and planners to formulate evidence based urban development policies and guide shrinking cities down the path of smart shrinkage.