The Effect of Urban Form on Urban Shrinkage—A Study of 293 Chinese Cities Using Geodetector

Abstract

Chinese cities are experiencing urban shrinkage due to demographic, environmental, economic, and political changes. However, urban form is another reason for urban shrinkage. This study first identified the shrinking of 293 cities in China based on the values of the change in brightness extracted from multi-year nighttime light data. Next, the characteristics of construction land morphology from 2019 were analyzed using landscape pattern analysis. Finally, the impact of urban form on urban shrinkage was explored using Geodetector. The results show that: (1) In total, 293 cities experienced different degrees of shrinkage. Regions with severe shrinkage were concentrated in the underdeveloped provinces, and autonomous central and western regions of China; moreover, (2) All factors of urban form significantly affected urban shrinkage. The largest q-values were found in patch density (0.144) and urban area (0.133), indicating that the degree of construction land fragmentation and urban area scale affected urban shrinkage the most; and (3) The interaction effects of pairwise factors were mutually or nonlinearly enhanced. The influence of urban form and socio-economic factors was stronger than that of socio-economic factors alone. This shows that the coupling of urban form and socio-economic factors strengthens the impact of urban form on urban shrinkage.