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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]

China's rapid urbanization has been attracting widespread interests of the economists, sociologists, and geographers all over the world in recent years. This study was conducted to analyze the network tendency of the urban system in China based on quantitative methods. In the theoretical analysis part, this paper reveals the transformation from a size-based to a network-based urban system in the urban system research and planning concept in China. Then, this paper established the network economy model and the linear model for quantitative analysis about network tendency of the urban system. The results were established based on the employment data for 18 major industry categories data and flow data of 35 cities from statistics on Chinese cities over the period 1999-2010. This paper reveals that urban networks have begun to affect the urban system increasingly more significantly, even more so than the size-based hierarchy. Further analysis shows that there will be a transition from size-based control to network-based control in the Chinese urban system in the coming decade (in 2018). The results of this study demonstrate that the methods applied here can facilitate an effective analysis of the change in urban hierarchy that has occurred in China. This research also provides lessons for urbanization studies in other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]