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Understanding the evolution of the urban spatial structure is of great significance for clarifying the stage and trajectory of urban development and formulating future urban development plans. Given that previous studies have marginally explored the long-term evolution of the urban employment spatial structure, this paper proposes a theoretical model hypothesizing five sequential stages of a complete evolution cycle from the perspective of mono- and polycentricity: mono-centralization, main-centralization, multi-centralization, de-centralization and re-centralization. Further empirical results based on 292 prefecture-level cities in China from 1997 to 2017 support the model and demonstrate that most cities present an evolution in line with the hypothesis, except a few cities experiencing short-term fluctuations, and approximately 60 % of cities are in the stage of multi-centralization, where subcenters have a growth advantage, and the main center has a scale advantage. Additionally, this paper reveals two characteristics of the evolution of the urban employment spatial structure in China: spatiotemporal compression and government intervention. • Propose a theoretical evolutionary model of urban employment spatial structure. • Empirically test the theoretical model based on a sample of 292 prefecture-level cities in China from 1997-2017. • The evolution of the urban employment spatial structure in China gradually tends to be polycentric. • Spatiotemporal compression and government intervention are features of China's urban employment spatial structure evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have witnessed a drastic shift in the spatial structure of China's large cities, from being monocentric to polycentric; however, the existing literature has not completely identified the transformation process, due to a lack of investigation from employment distribution. By using enterprise registration data from 1996, 2001, and 2010, this paper aims to fill the research gap by examining employment subcenters and their effect on population distribution in Beijing. We found that (1) the number of employment subcenters increased from 6 in 1996 to 11 in 2001, and to 16 in 2010; and (2) the population distribution in 2000 was not significantly affected by the appearance of employment subcenters, while the population distribution in 2010 was significantly and positively impacted by distance to the nearest subcenter. These results justify the trend of Beijing becoming a polycentric city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]