The smart city: a new solution to urban shrinkage? Evidence from China

ABSTRACT

While urban shrinkage has extensively befallen cities around the world, the current responses to urban shrinkage have been regarded as deficient and required optimization to help shrinking cities achieve sustainable economic growth and higher quality of life. This paper deploys difference-in-difference (DID) and successfully finds, based on China’s national smart city pilot projects, significant effects of smart city development on shrinking cities in catalyzing sustainable economic growth by upgrading and diversifying local industries, promoting economic growth, and providing a better quality of life for citizens through improved wages, enhanced urban environment and public service.

KEYWORDS:

• Shrinking cities
• smart cities
• policy response
• pilot project
• difference-in-difference
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council #1 under Grant number 202006120309, the National Social Science Foundation of China #2 under Grant number 17ZDA030 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China #3 under Grant number 72034001.

Notes on contributors

Zixuan Han

Zixuan Han is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology. His research interests include urban shrinkage and public policy. He is also a visiting Ph.D. student of the University of Oxford.

Kangjun Peng

Kangjun Peng is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology. Her research interests focus on public policy and policy evaluation. She is also a visiting Ph.D. student of the University of Warwick.

Jianing Mi

Jianing Mi is a Professor at the School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Public Management. His research interests include urban transformation and digital technology development.

Bin Li

Bin Li is a PhD candidate at the School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology. His research primarily focuses on computational social science.