Eight more cities began to shrink, this time not just in the northeast.

Following the first mention of the concept of "shrinking cities" in the official documents of the National Development and Reform Commission last year, in early April this year, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Key Tasks of New Urbanization Construction and Urban-Rural Integration Development in 2020", which once again mentioned that "shrinking cities should be thin and strong".

Regarding the attitude of shrinking the city, 20 19 refers to "changing the thinking inertia of incremental planning, strictly controlling the increment, revitalizing the stock, guiding the population and public resources to concentrate in the urban area" and "adjusting the size and structure of urban districts in a safe and orderly manner".

This year, it is directly required to "steadily reduce the municipal districts of shrinking cities and seriously study and adjust shrinking counties (cities)". This can not help but lead to speculation: will there be shrinking cities "disappearing"?

In fact, cities, like people, have life, old age, illness and death. Last year, Uncle Cheng's research found that 23 cities are shrinking.

Urban layout and mapping of 23 urban areas with declining permanent population: urban evolution theory

According to the Statistical Yearbook of Urban Construction 20 18 released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development not long ago, we once again observed the "growth" of 673 cities in China, and found that 10 of the above cities continued to shrink, and 8 new shrinking cities entered our field of vision.

The reason for their shrinkage is the "exhaustion of resources" widely discussed before, and they are in an unbalanced urban agglomeration, where resources converge to big cities and small and medium-sized cities lose the motivation to absorb population. What kind of fate awaits them?

Statistical description of data

Source: Statistical Yearbook of Urban Construction published by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development on 20 14-20 18.

Statistical indicators: urban permanent population (urban population+urban temporary population) and population density (urban permanent population/urban area).

Judgment of urban shrinkage: Based on the research of other scholars and the international definition, we think that "the permanent population in urban areas has been declining for three consecutive years" is shrinking.

Disadvantages of statistics: short time period and easy to be affected by temporary factors; Only consider the changes of the permanent population in cities and towns, and lack the analysis of economic efficiency, education level, industrial structure, aging and other factors.

The shrinking northeast cities.

Last year, according to the data of 20 14-20 17, Uncle Cheng counted the permanent population of cities and towns, and 23 cities showed a decline for three consecutive years. After the publication of "20 18 Statistical Yearbook of Urban Construction" and the new annual data, these 23 cities were divided into "improvement" and "continuous contraction".

In 20 18, 10 cities continued to shrink, and the resident population in cities and towns declined for the fourth consecutive year. Among them, there are 5 in Heilongjiang, 3 in Liaoning, Jilin 1 and Inner Mongolia 1.

Judging from the loss rate of permanent residents in cities and towns, it ranges from 20 14 to 20 18, with Xinmin and Kaiyuan in Liaoning exceeding 20% and Bayannaoer in Inner Mongolia approaching 10%.

In 20 18, the resident population in Xinmin, Liaoning, Hegang and Ji Xicheng decreased by 3.69%, 3.49% and 2.47% respectively.

Among these shrinking cities, Hegang is probably the most famous.

2065438+April 2009, Hegang, a small town in the fifth line of Northeast China, became popular because of the house price of 350 yuan/square meter. This resource-based city prospered from coal was recognized as a resource-exhausted city by the State Council in 20 1 1.

According to official website of hegang Municipal Government, the output of 2011460,000 tons of raw coal decreased by 9.3% year-on-year, and 6.648 million tons of washed coal decreased by 7% year-on-year. The pillar industries gradually declined, and a large number of young laborers left. The Statistical Yearbook of Heilongjiang Province shows that the registered population of Hegang has decreased by 99,500 in 20 years, and some media once described the street view of Hegang as "an old man who can only jump".

Like Hegang, Jixi and Fengcheng are typical representatives of resource-exhausted cities.

Behind the shrinking of these cities is the continuous loss of population, aging and declining birth rate in the whole Northeast.

In 20 19, the resident population of 4 provinces (cities and autonomous regions) in 3/kloc-0 showed negative growth, namely Beijing, Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang. Beijing has been controlling population growth and deconstructing non-capital functions; However, the resident population in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces decreased by 210.8 million,10.33 million and 76,000 respectively, and the natural growth rate of the resident population in the three provinces was-1.065, 438+0 ‰, -0.86‰ and -0.80‰ respectively.

At the same time, among the 23 shrinking cities we counted last year, 13 ushered in a population rebound in 20 18. Among them, the three northeastern provinces occupy 7 seats, and the other 5 cities are located in Henan, Guangdong, Sichuan and Ningxia.

Embarrassment in the middle zone of urban agglomeration

According to statistics, Cheng Shu also found that eight new cities began to show signs of shrinking.

In terms of regional distribution, these cities are mainly located in the northeast and central and western regions. Among them, Panzhihua and Suining, two Sichuan cities, came into view.

Panzhihua is a resource-based city in transition, and the contraction of Suining is largely due to the unbalanced development of urban agglomerations.

Suining is located at the central node of the main axis of Chengdu-Chongqing development, equidistant from Chengdu and Chongqing 128 km. The Suining Urban Master Plan (20 13-2030) previously passed mentioned that Suining hopes to play its role as a regional central city of the twin-city economic circle in Chengdu-Chongqing area, positioning itself as a secondary comprehensive transportation hub and a modern industrial base in Sichuan Province, and a modern ecological garden city featuring a "heart-nourishing" culture.

It is Suining's latest industrial development idea to actively integrate into the twin-city economic circle in Chengdu-Chongqing area, build a Suining demonstration zone of Sichuan-Chongqing cooperation, transform Suining's "leap effect" into "magnetic field effect" and truly realize "breakthrough in the central region".

Schematic diagram of Chengdu-Chongqing regional pattern Image source: Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration development plan

However, it is undeniable that Suining is currently in an embarrassing situation: Chengdu-Chongqing towns are densely distributed, but the absorption capacity of Chengdu-Chongqing elements is far greater than the spillover capacity, which is not enough to drive the regional economy, resulting in the "central collapse" of cities in the middle zone of Chengdu-Chongqing.

In Suining, although the built-up area is still expanding, the permanent population and population density continue to decrease, and urban industrial agglomeration and public services cannot attract enough people.

Previously, the Longying team of the School of Architecture of Tsinghua University conducted a study on "shrinking cities" based on the data of the fifth and sixth master plans.

They also found that the urban construction land area in Chengdu-Chongqing area expanded greatly (the expansion area was more than 2 times during 1980-20 10) and the population shrank (the population density exceeded 1000 people/square kilometer, and there was no growth during 2000-20 10).

As early as 2000-20 10, cities including Guang 'an, Suining and Neijiang in Sichuan had already seen the phenomenon that urban construction land increased and the population decreased instead of increasing.

"At present, with the development of urban agglomerations, the siphon effect in big cities is almost far greater than the trickle effect." Ding, an associate professor in the Department of Economics of Xiamen University, told Cheng Shu that public services such as education and medical care in China are distributed in a pyramid gradient according to the administrative level of the city. This way of resource allocation determines that there are many small towns next to big cities.

Ding believes that "as far as the central and western regions are concerned, the development of small towns will be more difficult because the development factors such as technology, capital and talents have been absorbed by big cities." Therefore, although the city is under construction, the absorption of population is declining.

How to "subtract" and "adjust"?

It is worth noting that while the city continues to shrink, it is also accompanied by the expansion of urban area and the decline of population density.

The urban population density calculated by dividing the urban resident population by the urban area reflects the allocation efficiency of urban land resources.

From 20 14 to 20 18, the population density of four cities in Heilongjiang decreased, especially in Jiamusi. When the urban area almost doubled, the population per square kilometer decreased by about 3000 people.

It reflects the utilization efficiency of urban construction land and is an index worthy of attention in the process of shrinking from incremental planning to stock planning.

This is also the significance of observing shrinking cities-when the growth rate of urban permanent population can't keep up with the expansion rate of urban area, it will cause resource mismatch, which is not conducive to the compact development of cities.

The Key Tasks of New Urbanization Construction and Urban-rural Integration Development in 2020 specifically mentioned that "the shrinking city districts should be steadily reduced, and the shrinking counties (cities) should be carefully studied and adjusted".

The so-called "shrinking", Ding believes that shrinking cities should not only adjust the administrative divisions, but also adjust the land area.

Ding mentioned that merging municipal districts, controlling the scale of urban construction land, and distributing land indicators to areas with a large net inflow of population will alleviate the tension between industrial land and commercial land. "The most important thing is to connect people with land, and the land indicators of shrinking cities should follow people." .

On the one hand, let "urbanization of people" replace "urbanization of land" as the mainstream, and determine the newly added land in cities according to population growth.

On the other hand, in the case of continuous population decline, it is necessary to adjust the zoning, improve the efficiency of resource allocation, and optimize the spatial distribution of population.

According to Yao Chen, vice-president and secretary-general of China Regional Economics Association, what needs to be reduced is some unreasonable divisions as far as administrative divisions are concerned. The so-called "unreasonable" means that some places have poor natural ecological conditions and are far from big cities, but they are still given great development rights, and these divisions can be adjusted appropriately.

However, he also reminded that we should be cautious in optimizing administrative divisions.