ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Urban Economics
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsc.2025.1604569
This article is part of the Research TopicUrban Economic Aspects of Energy, Exergy, and Environmental SustainabilityView all 5 articles
Did Urban Agglomeration Development Planning Policies Accelerate Urban Population Decline? A Quasi-natural Experiment Based on Urban Agglomeration Development Planning Policies in China1
Provisionally accepted
- Shaoxing University, Shaoxing, China
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To promote integrated development of large, small, and medium-sized cities, Chinese governments have successively implemented urban agglomeration development planning policies (UADPPs). However, UADPP may intensify the siphoning effect of large cities on SMCs within urban agglomeration (UA), accelerating population decline in small and medium-sized cities (SMCs) and undermining integration goals. Existing literature focuses on population agglomeration, siphoning effect, and the impact of UADPPs on regional economies, but lacks rigorous analysis of how UADPPs influence urban population decline—including its logical mechanisms. Using prefecture-level city data (2011–2022), this study adopts a quasi-natural experiment based on State Council-approved UADPPs. Results show that UADPPs strengthen the agglomeration effect of large cities, which triggers the siphoning of resources from surrounding SMCs. Meanwhile, UADPP, facilitating free flow of production factors, drives population migration from SMCs to large ones and accelerates the population decline in SMCs. Robustness tests confirm the validity of this conclusion. Additionally, the heterogeneity analysis reveals that the effect of UADPPs on accelerating urban population decline varies across different city types, urban agglomeration types, and regions. This effect is notably more pronounced and statistically significant in small cities, urban agglomerations characterized by low population agglomeration, and the central regions. Finally, drawing on the empirical results, international urban theory, and comparative urbanism, this study proposes policy recommendations to optimize UADPP implementation and mitigate its unintended consequences for populations in SMCs.
Keywords: Urban agglomeration development planning policy, agglomeration effect, urban population decline, siphoning effect, Urban agglomeration
Received: 02 Apr 2025; Accepted: 20 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jiang, Shao and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Qing Shao, Shaoxing University, Shaoxing, China
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