Unveiling the Regional Differences and Convergence of Urban Sprawl in China, 2006–2019

Qixuan Li, Ying Xu (), Xu Yang and Ke Chen
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Qixuan Li: School of Public Administration, Hunan University, Changsha 410012, China
Ying Xu: School of Public Administration, Hunan University, Changsha 410012, China
Xu Yang: School of Public Administration, Hunan University, Changsha 410012, China
Ke Chen: School of Public Administration, Hunan University, Changsha 410012, China

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: There is an obvious imbalanced regional development among eastern, central, and western China. This is also a fundamental problem that policy makers and planners need to address. Specific to urban development, we wondered whether there were regional differences in urban sprawl and whether this trend was under control. By using the urban sprawl index (USI), this paper investigated the spatiotemporal pattern of urban sprawl from 2006 to 2019, and its regional difference and convergence among eastern, central, and western China. It finds that the cities with high, medium, and low sprawl in the east and west regions are distributed with a clear geographical pattern, while the distribution in the central region has no intuitive geographical features. Also, the proportion of cities with high sprawl in the eastern region is more than that in the other regions, with low sprawl in central China and medium sprawl in the western region. Moreover, urban sprawl in all three regions showed a downward trend, but this process was fluctuating and had obvious phase characteristics. It can be concluded that there is a convergence trend in urban sprawl in China over the research period, and the club convergence effect exists in the eastern, central, and western regions.

Keywords: urban sprawl; spatiotemporal evolution; regional differences; convergence effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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