走过第一个十年 ：中国收缩城市研究进展与展望

At the milestone of the first decade of research on shrinking cities in China (2015-2024), this article reviewed the progress of the field and explored future directions based on journal articles retrieved from the CNKI and Web of Science Core Collection. The analysis was structured around three dimensions—development pattern, process of change, and research agenda—to reveal the internal logic and research trends of China's urban shrinkage studies, provide theoretical references for further exploration, and contribute Chinese experience to the global discourse on sustainable urban development. The review yielded three main findings. First, in terms of development pattern, scholarship on China's shrinking cities was characterized by multidisciplinary integration, spatial differentiation between research subjects and objects, and multi-actor engagement that links academia, poli-cy, and practice. Second, regarding evolutionary stages, the literature followed a three-phase trajectory—initial (2015-2018), deepening (2019-2021), and transformative (2022-2024) —and exhibited a knowledge pathway that moved from international experience introduction to domestic empirical research and then to theoretical ex-ploration. This trajectory aligned with a broader research logic of phenomenon identification → problem analysis → policy exploration. Third, with respect to topics, early studies concentrated on conceptual clarification, identification and measurement, and preliminary causal analysis; subsequent work foregrounded driving factors, spatial contradictions, and multi-dimensional impacts of shrinkage; the most recent and emerging research agen-das extended to social-cultural effects, spatial governance innovations, alignment with national strategic priori-ties, and technology-enabled policy tools. Overall, the Chinese scholarship has progressed from descriptive recognition of the phenomenon to systematic theorization and policy-oriented inquiry, clarifying the interactions between international experience, local empirical evidence, and theoretical synthesis. Looking ahead, the field is poised to broaden its analytical horizons and deepen its substantive inquiry by tightly coupling international ex-perience, theoretical development, and domestic empirical work to form a coherent research loop—from problem detection and mechanism diagnosis to evidence-based strategy design—that can support sustainable, context-sen-sitive governance of shrinking cities in China and beyond.