Slowest-growing city

According to the United Nations' World Urban Prospects 2018, the slowing growing (or fastest shrinking) city in the world is Yichun, China, which is expected to see a 1.48% decrease in population for the period 2015–2020.

Yichun is located in Heilongjiang province, in the far north-east of China about 160 km (100 miles) from the Russian border. The city, which is located amidst the boreal forests (Taiga) of China's icy north, was a booming lumber and sawmill town throughout the second-half of the 20th century. By the late 1990s however, almost all the forests near the city had been clear-cut and the economy was struggling. In 2008 the city was declared to have exhausted its natural resources by the Chinese government. What little logging industry was left was officially banned in an effort to restore the region's forests. It is thought that the official figures on the city's decline are a dramatic underestimate, but it's impossible to know the real situation.