Urban shrinkage and growth: Measurement and determinants of economic resilience in the Pearl River Delta

doi:10.1007/s11442-019-1662-6

Abstract

Abstract:

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, China witnessed gradual shrinkage of cities in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). In this study, we introduce the concept of economic resilience to analyse urban growth and shrinkage in the context of a rapidly-urbanising region. Multiple regression analysis is performed to explore the determinants of economic resilience in the PRD. By measuring resistance in the shrinking phase and recoverability in the growing phase in a group of cities in the PRD, this study distinguishes four scenarios and investigates their characteristics from a spatial perspective. The results demonstrate that the financial crisis had a severe and asymmetric influence on this area, indicating more than 15% of cities are faced with shrinking. The spatial distribution of economic resilience indicates a centre-periphery pattern, that is, high economic resilience in the inner ring and low economic resilience in the outer ring of the PRD. The service economy is found to play a significant role in promoting urban economic resilience. Results imply that sound economic policies for enhancing resilience: both poor local financial status and a high degree of export concentration adversely impact resistance, while upgrading the manufacturing economy and stimulating of industrial innovation are conducive to improve recoverability.

Key words: economic resilience, urban shrinkage, global financial crisis, shock resistance, shock recoverability, Pearl River Delta

DU Zhiwei, ZHANG Hongou, YE Yuyao, JIN Lixia, XU Qian. Urban shrinkage and growth: Measurement and determinants of economic resilience in the Pearl River Delta[J].Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2019, 29(8): 1331-1345.

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Variables	Definition	Min	Max	Average
FINAN	Local government’s general budgetary revenue / Local government’s general budgetary expenditure (%)	0.3995	1.5059	0.7725
INNOV	Number of invention patents granted / Number of R&D personnel (%)	0	0.0062	0.0002
FDI	Share of FDI in the GDP (%)	0.0101	0.1218	0.0431
CAPIT	Share of workforce with upper tertiary education (%)	0.0038	0.2505	0.0531
MANUF	Share of the manufacturing sector in the GDP (%)	0.0135	0.8752	0.4732
SERVE	Share of the service sector in the GDP (%)	0.1190	0.9699	0.4382

Variables	Resistance	Recoverability
FINAN	0.224^*** (4.42)	Non-significant
INNOV	Non-significant	0.054^** (6.82)
FDI	-0.751^** (-2.31)	Non-significant
CAPIT	Non-significant	Non-significant
MANUF	Non-significant	-0.364^*** (-1.75)
SERV	0.149^*** (2.09)	2.271^*** (1.48)
_cons	-0.077 (-1.30)	0.324 (1.48)
N	49	49
Adj.R²	0.428	0.419
F	7.00	4.10
VIF	1.21	1.67