Shrinking Cities and Towns: Policy Responses to the Challenges, Urban Planning, and Development Strategies

Li, Xun; Hui, Eddie C.M.; Long, Ying; Chen, Tingting; Lang, Wei

doi:10.1061/(asce)up.1943-5444.0000774

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Second, the sampled SS papers represent only research published in English, thus making our SS results biased toward English-speaking countries like the United States (e.g., Figures 4b and 8, Table 2). Third, the sampled SS papers explicitly mentioned in their title, abstract, and keywords the terms "smart shrink*", "smart decline", and/or "'right sizing' AND 'shrink*'" in the context of cities or urban areas, yet some studies on shrinking cities that use alternative terms like "urban redevelopment", "urban revitalization", "urban regeneration", and/or "urban resurgence" are insufficiently reflected by our results [60].…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 58%

Smart Growth and Smart Shrinkage: A Comparative Review for Advancing Urban Sustainability

Yang,

Dong,

Zhou

et al. 2024

Land

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the context of ongoing global urbanization, the disparity in urban development, marked by the dual phenomena of urban sprawl and urban shrinkage at the regional level, has become increasingly evident. In this vein, two land-related governance strategies—smart growth (SG) and smart shrinkage (SS)—emerge as potential remedies to these challenges, targeting urban expansion and shrinkage, respectively. This study bridges the gap in the fragmented discourse surrounding SG and SS by conducting a comprehensive comparative review on the respective literatures. Utilizing the Scopus database, our research employs trend analysis, text and topic mining, time node analysis, and regional analysis, augmented by qualitative reviews of seminal papers. The findings reveal a notable shift in research focus, with interest in SS surging around 2010 (the number of SS-related papers published after 2010 accounts for 92.3% of the total number of the entire study period) as attention to SG waned, suggesting an impending paradigm shift in urban sustainability. The analysis indicates that SS research lacks the disciplinary diversity, thematic breadth, and empirical depth of SG studies, underscoring a need for a more robust theoretical foundation to support urban sustainability. Furthermore, while both SG and SS derive from environmental science foundations, SG predominantly addresses the physical and landscape attributes of urban areas, whereas SS focuses more on socio-economic dimensions. Our findings point to an intrinsic link between SG and SS, which could lay the groundwork for their integration into a unified theoretical framework to better advance urban sustainability.

show abstract

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 58%

Smart Growth and Smart Shrinkage: A Comparative Review for Advancing Urban Sustainability

Yang,

Dong,

Zhou

et al. 2024

Land

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Special issues on shrinking cities have been published in overseas journals including the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research in 2012, Build Environment in 2012, and European Urban and Regional Studies in 2015 (Zhang and Li, 2017). Special collection about "Shrinking Cities and Towns" have been published in the journal Urban Planning and Development in 2021，Urban Design International in 2013, about "Promoting Social Justice and Equity in Shrinking Cities" in Journal of Urban Affairs in 2020 (Li et al, 2021) The Chinese government has issued new requirements and new policies regarding urban shrinkage research. The Key Tasks of New Urbanization Construction in 2019, released in March of that year by the National Development and Reform Commission of China, mentioned the development of shrinking cities for the first time, indicating that the government was starting to pay attention to the phenomenon in China.…”

Section: 'New Vitality' Of Urban Shrinkage Research Due To Global Aca...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress and major themes of research on urban shrinkage and its eco-environmental impacts

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Urban shrinkage is the process of population loss, industrial and functional decline, and eco-environmental deterioration due to various natural and human factors that occur once a city’s development reaches a certain point. It is an external manifestation of positive or negative changes in an urban economy, society, culture, resource use, and sustainability. Urban shrinkage is a new feature of global urbanization as well as a frontier of international and Chinese research. It has attracted widespread attention from academics in China and overseas, becoming an emerging trend that has spread from developed countries to underdeveloped ones. Research on and responses to urban shrinkage have also become new tasks of China’s new urbanization strategy. Our review of the existing literature reveals that there are significant temporal and spatial differences in research by Chinese and overseas scholars on urban shrinkage. Urban shrinkage studies have paid scant attention to interactions with the eco-environment, with analyses of urban shrinkage mechanisms and factors largely focusing on economic and social development factors; and urban shrinkage index analyses have tended not to include eco-environmental quality and environmental pollution indicators. The key tasks for future urban shrinkage research include the following: to conduct in-depth research on the mechanisms and driving factors of urban shrinkage to reveal the essence of urban shrinkage; to discover the principles behind interactions between urban shrinkage and the eco-environment, as well as to analyze the eco-environmental effects of urban shrinkage; to construct an index system for evaluating the extent, monitoring and providing warnings of, and containing urban shrinkage; and to research urban shrinkage coping strategies under different circumstances and carry out experiments and demonstrations according to local conditions.

show abstract

Smart shrinkage solutions? The future of present-day urban regeneration on the inner peripheries of Europe

Mykhnenko

2023

Applied Geography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Shrinking Cities and Towns: Policy Responses to the Challenges, Urban Planning, and Development Strategies

Cited by 6 publications

References 23 publications

Smart Growth and Smart Shrinkage: A Comparative Review for Advancing Urban Sustainability

Smart Growth and Smart Shrinkage: A Comparative Review for Advancing Urban Sustainability

Progress and major themes of research on urban shrinkage and its eco-environmental impacts

Smart shrinkage solutions? The future of present-day urban regeneration on the inner peripheries of Europe

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About