ABSTRACT
At present the whole society has paid much attention to the “4 mining problems”, i.e., mining industry, mines, miners, and mining cities. And sustainable development of mining cities has also become a hot topic. Mining cities are unique in that they originated from the exploitation and processing of energy and mineral resources, and their survival and development depends on the consumption of a certain quantity of natural resources. Now both the number of mining cities and their industrial output accounts for about one fifth of the national total. While having made great contribution to regional and national economy, mining cities are now facing with more and more severe challenges, which include serious environmental pollution, imbalance of industrial structure, unitary product line, exhaustion of mineral resources and increasing gap in social development. In order to help mining cities to extricate themselves from their current predicament, it is necessary to research into the sustainable development of mining cities. In this paper the theory of entropy is applied to the study of sustainable development of mining cities. The concept of entropy related to sustainable development of mining cities is first defined, and then basic principles and computation methods for increasing system entropy of mining cities are put forward. And the critical problems restraining mining cities from sustainable developing are finally revealed. The negentropy mechanism applied to sustainable development of mining cities is suggested. Specific policy suggestions such as building green mining cities, instituting early warning system for city development, and setting up a special fund for sustainable development of mining cities are put forward.
