Resilience difference between growing and shrinking resource-exhausted cities and its influencing factors

ABSTRACT

Resource-exhausted cities have different development paths in terms of urban growth and urban shrinkage in the transformation process. However, existing studies do not sufficiently understand the divergence of development paths. Taking Zaozhuang and Fuxin, a growing resource-exhausted city and a shrinking resource-exhausted city in China as examples, this study reveals the main causes of the divergence of path evolution in these two cities based on the analysis of resilience differences and their influencing factors. First, due to the insufficient management capacity of local governments, coal resource-exhausted cities will rely excessively on provincial or central government policies during a critical period of transformation and will fail to make long-term and realistic considerations about future strategic choices, thus evolving into shrinking cities. Second, in response to the crisis of coal resource exhaustion, the level of innovation is crucial to foster sustainable industries and thereby influence the future development path of resource-exhausted cities. In addition, a Fisher information–adaptive cycle analysis framework is constructed to explore differences in the development paths of resource-exhausted cities. This provides a new approach to comparing and assessing urban resilience and extends the quantitative adaptive cycle theory approach. Our empirical study proved that this analytical framework is reliable and generalizable.

KEYWORDS:

• Growing cities
• shrinking cities
• urban resilience
• resource exhaustion
• Fisher information
• adaptive cycle

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 42171191, 41771172, 42201211]; the Department of Science and Technology of Jilin Province [grant number 20220508025RC] and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [grant number 2018M641760].

Notes on contributors

Yu Jin

Yu Jin is a doctoral student in School of Geographical Sciences at Northeast Normal University. Her research interests include shrinking cities and urban resilience.

Guolei Zhou

Guolei Zhou is a lecturer in School of Geographical Sciences at Northeast Normal University, focusing on urban geography and urban planning.

Yanjun Liu

Yanjun Liu is a professor in School of Geographical Sciences at Northeast Normal University, focusing on human geography and urban studies.

Hongri Sun

Hongri Sun is a doctoral student in School of Geographical Sciences at Northeast Normal University. Her research interests focus on shrinking cities and housing vacancy.

Hui Fu

Hui Fu is a doctoral student in School of Geographical Sciences at Northeast Normal University. Her research interests include shrinking cities and urban vitality.