China’s development policies and city size distribution: An analysis based on Zipf’s law

Li Fang, Peng Li and Shunfeng Song
Additional contact information
Li Fang: University of Maryland, USA
Peng Li: State Information Center, China

Urban Studies, 2017, vol. 54, issue 12, 2818-2834

Abstract: Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China’s urban development policies have experienced dramatic changes, from anti-urbanisation before 1978, to anti-large-city-development during 1978–1999 and coordinated urbanisation in 2000–2012. Using city-level data from 1949 to 2012, this paper examines China’s development policies and city size distribution. Evidenced by the Zipf coefficient, we found that China’s city sizes became more evenly distributed before 2000, and this pattern was reversed after 2000. These findings suggest that China’s urban system is strongly affected by its shifting urban development strategies.

Keywords: city size distribution; Hukou; urban development policy; Zipf’s exponent Zipf’s law; 城市规模分布ã€; æˆ·å £ã€; åŸŽå¸‚å¼€å ‘æ”¿ç­–ã€; é½ å¤«æŒ‡æ•°ã€; é½ å¤«å®šå¾‹ (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098016653334 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:54:y:2017:i:12:p:2818-2834

DOI: 10.1177/0042098016653334

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().