Government- and Individual-Led Residential Relocation and Social Integration: Evidence from a Partially Shrinking City

The partial shrinkage of a resource-based city has created a special paradigm of intraurban relocation. Partial shrinkage characterizes the loss of population in certain areas of a city due to resource depletion, industrial decline, and so forth, while other areas maintain growth. The outflow of population from partially shrinking areas is mostly resettled in other areas within the city. The social integration characteristics and impact mechanisms of intraurban relocation of residents in the context of partial shrinkage are the core issues in this study. This research takes Jiutai District of Changchun City, a typical partially shrinking city in Northeast China, as an example, and constructs a theoretical framework for the interaction between residents’ relocation and social integration in partially shrinking cities. Based on the field research and interviews, the study uses spatial interpolation and path analysis to explore the characteristics of government-led and individual-led relocation behaviors, and tries to explain the influence mechanism of relocatees’ social integration. The results show that the relocation behavior of residents presented a one-way divergent spatial feature with a shrinking core area as the center. In government-led relocation, most residents were relocated to resettled communities, and the timing of relocation was closely related to the timing of partial shrinkage. Individual-led residential relocation came later than government-led relocation, and the destination communities were relatively scattered. The overall level of social integration in individual-led relocation was higher than that in government-led relocation. The relocatees’ age, job, income level directly affected the degree of social integration. Facilities closely related to residents’ lives, such as education and culture, sports and entertainment, and government agencies all indirectly affected the level of social integration by influencing the residents’ life satisfaction. Government behaviors play a key role in promoting the resettlement of residents in partially shrinking cities. However, it is still necessary to accelerate the social integration of relocatees through rebuilding facilities, improving social security, and other methods.