Spatial Structure Evolution of Urban Agglomerations and Its Driving Factors in Mainland China: From the Monocentric to the Polycentric Dimension

Feng Lan, Huili Da, Haizhen Wen and Ying Wang
Additional contact information
Feng Lan: School of Management, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi’an 710055, China
Huili Da: School of Management, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi’an 710055, China
Haizhen Wen: Department of Civil Engineering, Center of Real Estate Study, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Ying Wang: School of Management, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi’an 710055, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-20

Abstract: Urban agglomerations (UAs) have become the urbanized “growth poles”, especially against the background of increasing population flow to cities. The spatial structure of UAs has been deemed the essential factor affecting regional function and sustainable development. Although there have been many meaningful studies on spatial structure changes in China, a systematically comparative work of UAs is still absent. Under this context, this paper examines the changing process of spatial structure in 20 Chinese UAs from monocentric to polycentric during the years 1992–2012 by using the night-time light data—an alternative to census data—and explores the major driving forces underlying the evolution. Our empirical results suggest that there is an obvious polycentric tendency of UAs, the spatial distribution pattern of which is not apparent. Panel regression models reveal that the economic level, the population size, the foreign direct investment (FDI), the human capital, and the transport infrastructure play significant positive roles in shaping the polycentric changing process, while the growth of the government expenditure does the opposite. Moreover, transport infrastructure and FDI are positively associated with polycentric spatial structure in mature UAs; on the contrary, they are negatively associated with it in the emerging UAs. Our study results have important policy implications for rapid Chinese urbanization—the policy whereby “China’s future urbanization development model is to limit the agglomeration of large cities while focusing on developing small and medium-sized cities” may be more efficient in mature UAs.

Keywords: spatial structure evolution; influencing factors; urban agglomerations; polycentric; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/610/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/610/ (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:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:3:p:610-:d:200480

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().