LAUSR

Abstract Sustainable development is an important issue to comprehensively revitalize the old industrial base of Northeast China. Thus, this study collected a set of 21 indicators covering economic, social, and environmental dimensions to construct an index system and proposed the integrated TOPSIS-ORM, based on the interaction between different indicators, to evaluate the sustainability performance of the shrinking cities in Northeast China. To assess the reasons for sustainability fluctuation, factors influencing sustainability were analyzed. The most significant finding to emerge from this investigation is that the interrelationship between indicators in the sustainability evaluation should be considered. The empirical results proved that the sustainability performance of the shrinking cities in Northeast China was poor, and experienced a substantial decline during the investigated period of 2013 to 2017. However, the sub-provincial cities, Dalian, Shenyang, Changchun, and Harbin, obtained relatively better evaluation values. The spatial distribution demonstrates that the cities with similar sustainability were clustered together on the map and moved to eastern Northeast China. Comparing the indicators demonstrated that economic indicators were the common limiting factors impeding sustainability in most shrinking cities. Additionally, the improvement in sustainability performance was attributed to the increase in the environmental dimension in Northeast China.