The Way To Change A Mining Town’s Development Pattern Based On The Life Cycle Theory

After the international financial crisis,the developed western countries realized the severe disadvantage of solely depending on the fictitious economy. They started the process of reindustrialization to revitalize the manufacturing industry. As the development of China’s economy is dependent on the outside market and outside resources, the retreat of outside capital and disappearance of human resource advantage require China to change its way of economic development, and to discard the fast-speed, inharmonious and extensive way of growth. In the current situation of weaker demand of global market, slower growth of China’s economy and urbanization rate, the consumption of some natural resources and raw materials declines,which frustrates the development of some mining town’s natural resource industry with overcapacity and severe loss. At the same time, some mining towns’ natural resources are drying up, which makes the towns’ living spaces shrinked, development momentum lost and economy declined. Mining towns’ economy usually solely relies on the industry of mining and preliminary processing of natural resources, while the current new international and domestic economic situation urges mining towns to change its way of economic development and to adapt into a new industrial structure.Based on the common pattern of a mining town’s life cycle, we study the industrial, demographic and spatial characteristics of mining towns in different stages of the cycle of “growing-mature-declining” affected by the reservation amount of natural resources and the prosperity of the mining industry. The specific characteristics are: 1) mining towns’ industrial structure evolves as “mining-dominated sole structure”, “non-mining industries emerging with an imbalanced structure”, “the declining mining industry with the weak momentum of non-mining industries contributing a defective industrial structure”; 2) Demographic development is synchronized with the mining town’s economic and industrial development. It shows the pattern of an up-side-down “U”s curve as “normal growth – explosive growth – declining”; 3) With the change of mining industry’s influential power in a mining town’s economic development, the spatial structure of the mining-first urbanization-later style mining towns shows the evolvement pattern of “mining-dominated single-center structure”, “urbanization functions spreading with single-centered ring layer structure”, “shrinked structure with declining mining industry”; the spatial structure of the urbanization-first mining-later style mining towns shows the evolvement pattern of “dual core structure with a growing mining industry”, “band structures with dual core and aggregating industrial resources”, “deindustrialized single-center structure” However, if mining towns can change its way of economic development before the drying up of natural resources, the evolvement pattern of the different factors would change accordingly, which can help the towns get rid of the dependence on natural resources and realize the long-term sustainable development.From the need of changing the way of economic development of mining towns, based on the life cycle patterns, we propose the mechanisms of mining towns’ way of changing: the growing stage’s internal growing momentum combined with the government-led external stimulation, the mature stage’s internal ecosystem restoration demand combined with the external changing opportunities, the declining stage’s economic regeneration power combined with the civil service requirements. With the above three forces, we build the system of mining towns’ sustainable way of changing its development at different stages: the healthy ”industry-and-urbanization-synchronized” development at growing stage, the regulated and controlled“self-regeneration” development at mature stage, the diversified “smart contraction” development at declining stage, and the general spatial-quality-oriented development at all different stages.Taking the typical mining town Ling Dong as an example, summarized its situation and development process at its growing stage and mature stage. From the aspects of industrial development, civil service and environmental protection, we analyzed the current dilemmas faced by Ling Dong in the process of changing its way of development: 1) overcapacity of the cement industry with weak supplementary industries 2) downtown area is not expansive, restricting the sustainable urbanization; 3) serious ecological damage with weak landscape design. With the opportunity of Ling Dong’s changing its way of development at the mature stage, we propose the sustainable methods for Ling Dong’s changing its way of development: 1) updating its industrial structure: reconstructing its industrial structures in a multi-core way,recycling economy leading the upgrade of its core industry, internal revitalization of cement industry, and developing a head-quarter economy; 2) upgrading infrastructures: constructing public service infrastructures in the downtown area, building a comprehensive civil service network to energize the urbanization process;3) green interconnection: building an ecological nature by re-greening the mining area and eliminating the pollution, planning a green channel connecting the scenery parks in town, forming a networked green ecological living space.