• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.33-45
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• 2019

Due to the global low growth trend, urban shrinkage is a major issue of urban policy in major industrialized countries. According to the research results of the KRIHS(Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements, 2016), 23 out of 77 cities in Korea were diagnosed as continuous or temporary shrinking cities. However, the criterion for diagnosing shrinking cities remain on the simple demographic side, and the spatial shrinkage pattern of the city is not considered. Therefore, this study diagnosed urban shrinkage phenomenon considering the characteristics of Yeong-ju, a poly-centric city, by using the population gradient curve, which is one of the urban spatial structure analysis methods. As a result of the diagnosis, Yeong-ju turned out to be a shrinking city with the population density and the slope of population density increasing. In the case of area of Dong, a sprawl phenomenon in which the population density of the CBD and the slope of the population density were decreased was shown. And in the case of Punggi-eup, a simple shrinkage phenomenon in which only the population density of the CBD was decreased was shown. The results show that even within a city, the pattern of spatial change can be different for each centers. In the case of a city with a poly-centric structure, the implications for the individual diagnosis of not only the entire city but also the detailed area were drawn.