Spatial and Temporal Evolution of Urban Systems in China during Rapid Urbanization

Huan Li, Yehua Dennis Wei and Yuemin Ning
Additional contact information
Huan Li: Collaborative Innovation Center for China Economy, School of Economics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
Yehua Dennis Wei: Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization of Henan Province, Henan University, Kaifeng 475001, China
Yuemin Ning: Centre for Modern Chinese City Studies, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 7, 1-17

Abstract: The structure of urban hierarchy and the role of cities of different sizes have drawn considerable scholarly interests and societal concerns. This paper analyzes the evolution and underlying mechanisms of urban hierarchy in China during the recent period of rapid urbanization. By comparing scale changes of seven types of cities (megacity, large city, Type I big city, Type II big city, medium-sized city, type I small city and type II small city), we find that allometry is the main characteristic of urban hierarchical evolution in China. We also test the validity of Zipf’s law and Gibrat’s law, which broaden the scope of existing studies by including county-level cities. We find that urban hierarchical distribution is lognormal, rather than Pareto. The result also shows that city size growth rates are constant across cities of different types. For better understanding of the mechanisms of urban hierarchical formation, we measure the optimal city size and resource allocation by the Pareto optimality criterion and non-parametric frontier method. The main findings are as follows: (1) scale efficiency is still at a relatively low level among the seven types of cities; (2) the economic efficiency of megacities and large cities is overestimated when compared to economic-environmental efficiency. Hence, this paper has two policy implications: (1) to correct factor market (land, labor and infrastructure investment) distortions among different types of cities for the improvement of efficiency; (2) to strengthen rural property rights to improve social equity, as well as land use intensity.

Keywords: urban hierarchy; Zipf’s law; Gibrat’s law; total-factor productivity; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/7/651/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/7/651/ (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:8:y:2016:i:7:p:651-:d:73614

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 ().