Understanding Urban Growth and Shrinkage From a Multiscale Perspective: Case Study of Jilin Province, China.

The development statuses of cities are intimately associated with their spatial scales. Multiscale trajectories of cities are lenses through which can be discerned the pattern and tendency of regional development. In this paper, using comparisons of demographic and economic development, geographic detectors, and hierarchical logistic regressions, we examine the evolutionary characteristics and influential factors of multiscale urban development in Jilin Province, China. The findings show that alongside the "top-down" transformations of the spatial scales, the typologies of urban development tend to diversify. Economic and political factors played key roles in the divergence of growth and shrinkage of prefecture-level, while natural and social factors had strong effects on the divergence between growth and shrinkage of county-level cities and small towns. Moreover, urban development has demonstrated scale connection: towns under the jurisdictions of absolutely growing county-level cities are likely to be subjected to smart shrinkage; towns under the jurisdictions of smartly growing county-level cities are prone to potential shrinkage; towns under the jurisdictions of absolutely shrinking county-level cities are at risk of absolute shrinkage. Our findings recommend that regional policies take multiscale spaces into account to capture regularity of regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]