Urban Shrinkage from the Perspective of Economic Resilience and Population Change: A Case Study of the Shanxi-Shaanxi-Inner Mongolia Region

With the increasing uncertainty of urban development, urban shrinkage in the rapid urbanization process in China has become increasingly serious. While many studies have explored urban shrinkage from the economic and population perspectives, they often ignore the essence of the phased evolution of economic and population factors. Thus, this study introduces the theory of economic resilience into the field of urban shrinkage and constructs a theoretical method for identifying urban shrinkage by integrating economic resilience and population change to reveal the evolutionary trajectory of regional urban growth and shrinkage. The results show that urban economic resilience and population change in the Shanxi-Shaanxi-Inner Mongolia region (SSIMR) exhibit strong volatility, highlighting the importance of conducting urban shrinkage studies within specific crisis disturbance scenarios. In the context of the “new normal of the economy”, the economic resilience of cities in the SSIMR has significantly declined, and the problem of economic recession is gradually intensifying. The population change trend of cities in the SSIMR is relatively stable, with population loss being a common problem in urban development in the area and its scope and intensity increasing daily. Urban development in the SSIMR is evolving from global growth to widespread shrinkage, with 56.67% of the cities experiencing relative shrinkage, showing a spatial pattern of “western growth–eastern shrinkage”. Factors such as the agglomeration effect, industrial structure, and policy system collectively shape the evolution of urban growth and shrinkage.