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Complex Pathways to Population Shrinkage: Case Study of Hegang City, China

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Abstract

With the transformation of China’s industry and demographic structure, urban shrinkage, especially the resource-based cities due to their single industrial structure, tend to emerge gradually. Using empirical and quantitative methods, this paper explores the evolution mechanism of urban shrinkage in Hegang, a resource-based city in China. Our findings suggest that there are many correlations or cyclic relationships among variables, which provide an empirical confirmation for the complexity of urban shrinkage process. The result shows there is a time delay of about four to five years between the mining industry and the changes of demographic profile, economic performance and built environment variables. The development of Hegang has formed a path dependence on resource-based industries. Furthermore, the time lags between demographic profile and economic performance variables are not obvious, and the real estate market has a certain sensitivity to perceive population loss and economic change. Besides, market led public service facilities are more sensitive to the changes of population outflow and economic recession than government led public service facilities. The study findings could offer insights for other resource-based cities in developing countries to employ on the economic development policies issues.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management and Engineering, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, 100070, China

    Tingting Wang & Cuiyou Yao

  2. Beijing Key Laboratory of Megaregions Sustainable Development Modeling, Beijing, 100070, China

    Kang Wu

  3. School of Urban Economics and Public Affairs, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, 100070, China

    Kang Wu & Xiaoxiao Liu

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  1. Tingting Wang
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  2. Kang Wu
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Correspondence to Kang Wu.

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Foundation item: Under the auspices of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42171216, 71703001, 41671161), the Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation (No. 171077), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Capital University of Economics and Business (No. QNTD202009)

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Wang, T., Wu, K., Yao, C. et al. Complex Pathways to Population Shrinkage: Case Study of Hegang City, China. Chin. Geogr. Sci. 32, 418–437 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11769-022-1276-2

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