Independent mining areas and cities exhibit different dependencies depending on their development stages. With the depletion of coal resources, independent mining areas inevitably fall into the situation of coal exhaustion, while facing the challenges that urbanization has caused. This paper explores the evolution of the spatial relationship between independent mining areas and the city in Jincheng, taking the three independent mining areas of Gushuyuan Mine, Wangtaipu Mine and Fenghuang Mountain Mine (referred to as the three old mines) as examples. The results show that the spatial relationship between the independent mining areas and the city has gone through the evolution process of association, mine independent of the city, city independent of the mine, integration. Based on the spatial relationship between independent mining areas and cities, this study points out the troubles faced by the development of mining areas, and proposes strategies for optimizing the spatial relationship between mining areas and cities, so as to realize the coordination of mining-city development, with a view to providing references for the redevelopment of other independent mining areas in China.

Independent mining areas;,Spatial relationship;,Coal resource-based city;,Jincheng City;,Three old mines