Spatial restructuring and population shrinkage along with industrialization in counties: The case of Jiangsu Province

Abstract

Industrialization in counties has led to changes in their economic and spatial structures. Consequently, county-level economic structure has transformed from the agricultural into the manufacturing and services sector, and the manufacturing has transformed from labor-intensive to tech-intensive in the most dynamic counties. With the growth of the manufacturing, the spatial distribution of manufacturing industries has the trend of agglomeration followed by dispersion. Before the proportion of the manufacturing's employment in the county reaches 40–50% of the total, the manufacturing industries tend to agglomerate with tech-intensive industries being more agglomerated than labor-intensive industries. However, after the 40–50% turning point, the manufacturing has a trend of dispersion as the tech-intensive and labor-intensive industries have smaller disparity in the degree of agglomeration. Moreover, county-level industrial agglomeration promotes population agglomeration, resulting in a higher percentage of shrinking town-centers in the county. Additionally, industrial dispersion weakens the trend of population agglomeration in the county, and thus, the percentage of shrinking town-centers decreases.