As the global urbanization process shifts from “incremental expansion” to “stock optimization”, urban shrinkage is reshaping the world’s urban landscape with unprecedented scale and complexity. This study examines the relationship between demographic change and urban societal sustainability by analyzing population data from 275 prefecture-level cities in China between 2000 and 2022, combined with a newly developed Urban Societal Sustainability Resilience Index (USSRI) grounded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Results show that over half of Chinese cities experienced population decline, mainly in the northeast, resource-dependent, and traditional industrial areas. However, changes in social sustainability do not exhibit a linear relationship with population trends. Unlike growing cities that face increasing pressure on public services, some shrinking cities have enhanced their service resilience through governance innovation. Based on the dual dynamics of population change and USSRI evolution, cities are classified into four types: strategically managed shrinking cities, passively declining shrinking cities, expansion-driven high-pressure cities, and optimized growth cities, each exhibiting distinct spatial patterns and governance needs. Accordingly, this study proposes differentiated governance strategies that emphasize adaptive management, equitable public service provision, and cross-regional coordination, providing theoretical insights and practical references for sustainable urban transformation in China and other developing regions.
Liu et al. (2026) studied this question.