Study On The Transformation Of Coal Resource-based Cities In Shanxi

Shanxi Province is one of the largest coal preservative provinces in China and in turn coal recourse play a pretty important role in the development of Shanxi Province. There are three main contradictions currently present and impact the normal development of coal resource-based cities:First, since urban development is extremely dependent on the coal resources, so the urban economic structure would be encountering broken down with almost depleted coal resources; Second, tremendous stress come from the employment market, social security and other issues during economic transformation; Last, the assignments of improving city environment and restructuring of city architecture along with exploitation of resources are too heavy. The main problems during the economic transformation of coal resources-based city are mainly exposed as followings: insufficient reservation of coal resources leading to a range level of depletion; single pillar industry and highly dependent on coal resources causing an unstable economic background; weak financial revenue in local government and extremely environmental pollution and geological disasters; high urban living stress; lag off in social insurance and security aspects, the low status of employees’ income and living standards; the contradictory relationships between management system and benefit mechanism, and between government and companies. The later one is pretty outstanding, a mix function happened in government and companies.With the increasing worldwide population and economic scale, the human demand for coal, oil and other resources is also increasing. Obviously, in the same time energy exploitation caused serious negative impacts, i.e. global warming. In addition, coal, oil and other energy are non-renewable resources, which cannot meet the continuously growing demand of mankind in future. Especially coal in the coming decades will face depletion. Therefore, it is necessary to draw the useful experience from the developed countries to fulfill transformation of coal resource-based cities in Shanxi Province.In order to solve the above problems, the coal resource-based cities need completely transformation, including cultivating alternative industries, eco-remediation, urban construction and innovation. Furthermore, in order to achieve sustainable economic growth, lifting social welfare, environmental improvement, transformation of urban management system and even others objectives, the transformation of coal resources-based cities should focus on implementation of the "economic transformation, institutional innovation, upgrading facilities, beautification of landscape" these four strategies. The government should vigorously promote the transformation from an industrial city to a new coal resource-based city, transition from a closed city to an open city, infrastructure from a pool city to a beautiful city.