Building a “reservoir of social resilience:” A strategy for social infrastructure regeneration in shrinking cities based on social network analysis

Northeast China is generally experiencing a shrinkage phenomenon similar to that in other old industrial regions worldwide. Large-scale growth-oriented regeneration programs by the government over the long term have led to the decline of social infrastructure in inner cities, thereby causing a structural crisis at the social level, and exacerbating the negative effects of shrinkage. This study investigated Hegang as a typical shrinking city in northeastern China. Coupling analysis was conducted based on network indexes and two categories of social resilience indexes to identify the key social infrastructure that provides residents with resilience to help cope with shrinkage. Our results demonstrate the centralizing effect of large-scale retail sites, and large green spaces and squares on social resilience. We also found that these categories of social infrastructure had effects across different areas of the city, which then provided social resilience to a wider range of residents. Our results also provide evidence for inequalities in the ability of residents to cope with shrinkage. Based on these findings, we characterize China's urban shrinkage and future development trends, and discuss the limitations of the regeneration model that has long been adopted by local governments. We suggest that local governments should consider incorporating investment in resilience to shrinkage into regeneration policies. They should also consider regenerating social infrastructure and deploying funds to a holistic network to build “reservoirs” of social resilience in shrinking cities. In addition, we highlight our methodological contributions and argue that social resilience monitoring should be integrated into China's urban physical examination framework to enhance dynamic planning and the sustainable regeneration capacity of shrinking urban local governments.