ANNUAL CONGRESS 2025

Peripheralization as process: shrinkage of small towns in metropolitan area——Case study of Shanghai

Not scheduled

20m

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Oral Track 07 | INCLUSION

Speaker

Ms Shuo Han (Tongji University)

Description

Amidst the tide of global competition, the evolution of metropolitan regions and the associated phenomena of polarization and peripheralization have garnered increasing scholarly and policy attention. As urbanization and regional integration advance, Shanghai's central urban district has witnessed continuous expansion, with its competitiveness and influence in land use dynamics, industrial development, and talent attraction progressively intensifying. Nevertheless, the peripheral rural areas of Shanghai and the dispersed small towns therein are not also developing at the same pace. In fact, some small suburban towns are going through shrinkage, characterized by demographic decline, industrial atrophy, and spatial Degeneration.
This shrinkage phenomenon has further exacerbated the erosion of the power base of small suburban towns within urban areas, leading to the loss of their developmental resources and voice, thereby engendering a downward spiral of peripheralization. At the economic level, the process of peripheralization has led to the exclusion to small towns and rural area from the core of the region, the developmental disparity between small suburban towns and central urban areas has widened further, the manifestation of spatially uneven development has become more pronounced, and residents from different communities have experienced increased inequities in employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. At the social level, the process of peripheralization has accelerated the loss of community identity. Local residents have gradually been displaced, resulting in spatial social divisions and a reduction in social inclusiveness.
This study elucidates the dilemmas confronted by these small suburban towns in Shanghai from the perspective of peripheralization. It delineates the dynamics of peripheralization in small suburban towns on one hand, and on the other, it investigates the role of government decision-making, planning instruments, and the interactions among multiple stakeholders. Specifically, it examines how these factors influence the process of peripheralization in small suburban towns, and explores how the process of peripheralization leading to the exclusion in metropolitan region.

References

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