Building resilient cities in the shrinking paradigm: A UK and China comparison using new sources of big data

尽管城市化是一个既定的趋势，但城市萎缩是世界各地的普遍现象。随着全球化的日益发展，发达国家和发展中国家的城市都经历了经济衰退、人口减少和去城市化。发达国家（如英国、美国、德国和日本）已经广泛讨论和记录了城市萎缩的原因和解决方案。然而，在发展中国家，特别是在拥有大量快速发展城市的中国，对城市萎缩问题以及如何解决这些问题的深入理解仍然缺乏。可以借鉴发达国家的深刻见解，以便更好地应对发展中国家不断缩小的城市在建设复原力方面的挑战。由于资源枯竭、去工业化和人口结构的变化，包括辽宁、吉林和黑龙江在内的东北省份，现在被称为中国的“铁锈地带”，在城市萎缩的数量上位居榜首。同样，英国大部分下降的城市都在英格兰北部，这是南北差距的一个强烈迹象。英格兰北部的核心城市如利物浦、曼彻斯特、利兹、谢菲尔德和纽卡斯尔与东北地区的核心城市在工业遗产、人口老龄化、城市区域内失去对周边地区的增长支持力等方面具有一些共同特征。通过比较研究这两个国家的城市对内部和外部变化的承受能力，可以深入了解这两个国家的城市。该项目以中国东北地区城市为重点，旨在1）识别和更好地理解收缩城市的空间，经济和社会问题以及与其他中国城市相关的支撑机制，2）通过对中国和英国城市收缩的比较研究，设计适应性策略，以建立这些城市的弹性。该项目将扩大现有的研究，将人类流动和城市互动的空间、经济和社会层面结合起来，并在确定城市复原力的多层面衡量和评估时考虑所有三个层面的相互作用。此外，该项目将促进UoB研究团队与中国利益相关者之间的合作，以便在政策制定中纳入地方利益并使决策者受益。

Urban shrinkage is a common phenomenon throughout the world despite urbanisation being a well-established trend. With increasing globalisation, cities in both developed and developing counties experience economic downturn, population decline, de-urbanisation. Reasons and solutions of urban shrinkage have been discussed and documented extensively for developed countries (e.g. UK, US, Germany, and Japan). However, deeper understanding of urban shrinkage issues and how to resolve them in the developing world, especially in China with a large number of fast growing cities, is still lacking. Insights from developed countries could be learned in order to better address the challenges for building resilience into shrinking cities of the developing world. Northeast China provinces, including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang, now known as the "rust belt" in China, have topped the chart in the number of shrinking cities due to resource depletion, deindustrialization, and the change of demographic structure. Similarly, most of the top UK declining cities are in the north of England as a strong indication of the North-South divide. Core cities of North England, such as Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle, share some common characteristics with their counterpart in Northeast China in terms of industrial legacy, aging population, and loss of growth power to support surrounding areas in city-regions. Insights could be gained for those cities in both countries by a comparative study of their resilience to internal and external changes. With a focus on Northeast China cities, this project seeks to 1) identify and better understand the spatial, economic and social issues of shrinking cities and the underpinning mechanisms in relation to other Chinese cities, and 2) design adaptive strategies to build resilience into these cities through a comparative study of urban shrinkage in China and UK. This project will expand the existing research by combining the spatial, economic and social dimensions of human mobility and urban interactions and considering the interplay of all three dimensions in defining a multidimensional measurement and assessment of urban resilience. Furthermore, this project will promote the collaboration between the UoB research team and the Chinese stakeholders in order to incorporate local interests and benefit decision-makers with both general and place-based strategies in policy-making.