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A mega city region comprises a cluster of highly networked urban settlements anchored by one or more large cities. Substantial studies have been conducted in the 21st century to theorise the development of mega city regions from two perspectives: one focuses on the rationale/challenges of planning and governance while the other focuses on the economic forces that generate the mega city regions. In China, the outstanding position of mega city regions in China's economic development has been accentuated in both academic research and recent policies. Recent studies have unpacked the political dynamics of mega city regions in China and identified challenges for planning and governance. The present study approaches this issue through another theoretical lens and deciphers the economic process underneath the recent upsurge of Chinese mega city regions. By unfolding the economic transition since the late 1970s to trace the footprints of mega city region development, the paper contributes a discourse of how different waves of economic transition – that is, rural industrialisation, land-centred development and urban tertiarisation – have been steering individual cities towards super mega city regions. The paper also identifies the distinctive challenges confronting the future development of China's mega city regions, including jurisdictional fragmentation, socio-spatial inequality and environmental externalities, which were created because of the strong bottom-up initiatives in land development during rural industrialisation. New policies and planning are required in response to these challenges as well as to the emerging new industries in the new wave of economic transition (i.e. from labour-intensive industries to the development of high-tech industries). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of cities in China is becoming increasingly important, not just within China but globally. China's urban population has grown from about 200 million in 1980 to about 800 million or 59% in 2018: that is about twice the total population of the USA and 1.5 times the total population of the EU. China has over 100 cities with over a million people. There are also more and more papers being written about urbanisation in China. However, urban development in China is very unlike urban development in the west or in many other developing countries. Despite the growth of a large, dynamic market sector, China is still a Communist country in terms of the pervasive and leading role of the party and the state. The question posed in this commentary is whether urbanisation in China is unique; or, to be more precise, whether the post-reform Chinese experience of urbanisation since around 1980 is so unusual that it constitutes an entirely unique case which lies outside conventional generalisations about urban change processes. This question links to recent discussions of comparative urbanism in which various scholars have grappled with questions about the generalisability of urban theory and experience. The tentative conclusion is that Chinese urbanisation may be unique and is certainly not easily subsumed into standard discussions about urban development and urban change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Urban infrastructure has been substantially upgraded in reform-era China. This paper explains, contextually and empirically, how Chinese cities finance their infrastructure. It demonstrates that China has succeeded in addressing urban infrastructure backlogs by opening up new venues for financing, but simultaneously, heavily relying on unconventional sources. The paper also argues that urban infrastructure financing has much to do with the country’s transition to a market-oriented economy that fosters the pro-growth role of city governments as well as the redistribution of fiscal power between the levels of the urban hierarchy that produces significant variation of financial capacities among the different administrative ranks of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on the parallel growth implications of the four urban growth theories (endogenous growth theory, random growth theory, hybrid growth theory and locational fundamentals theory), this paper uses Chinese city size data from 1984 to 2006 and time-series econometric techniques to test for parallel growth. The results from various types of stationarity tests show that city growth is generally random. Conditioning on growth trend and structural change, certain groups of cities with common location-specific characteristics, such as a similar natural resource endowment or policy regime, grow parallel in the long run, suggesting that locational fundamentals may have a persistent impact on city growth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the evolution of the size distribution of Chinese cities. Since the relaxation of restrictions on rural-urban migration in the 1980s, China has experienced rapid urban growth. However, cities of different sizes have experienced varying patterns of growth. First, the evolution of city size distribution in China is described by documenting the growth in city size and in the number of existing cities. Then, focusing on the period from 1990 to 2000, the urban evolutionary trend is analysed by means of the Pareto law estimation and the mobility of cities between different size groups is examined with the Markov transition matrix. The convergence hypothesis in the city population growth process is also tested. The results suggest that, contrary to the expected dominance of large city growth, the Chinese city size distribution evened out during the 1990s, with small cities growing more rapidly than large cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a consensus in China that industrialization, urbanization, globalization and information technology will enhance China’s urban competitiveness. We have developed a methodology for the analysis of urban competitiveness that we have applied to China’s 25 principal cities during three periods from 1990 through 2009. Our model uses data for 12 variables, to which we apply appropriate statistical techniques. We are able to examine the competitiveness of inland cities and those on the coast, how this has changed during the two decades of the study, the competitiveness of Mega Cities and of administrative centres, and the importance of each variable in explaining urban competitiveness and its development over time. This analysis will be of benefit to Chinese planners as they seek to enhance the competitiveness of China and its major cities in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We analyse the geographies of urban networks created by leading producer services (PS) firms in China. Because of the national regulation of the Chinese state-led economy and the location strategies of global advanced producer services (APS) firms, the geography of global APS in China as examined by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) cannot be studied as a subnetwork of GaWC’s global network, but needs an empirical study based on a wide range of leading PS in the Chinese market. We explore the spatial differentiation in the connectivity of Chinese cities based on the location strategies of 323 APS firms in 287 Chinese cities. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen emerge as the primary nodes. The spatial distribution of banking, securities, and insurance services networks appears to be more even than those of non-financial PS firms. Regional disparity exists in terms of polycentric urban development in coastal China, as well as in the centralisation model in central and western areas. We suggest that owing to the continued tight regulation of China’s state-led economy and the nature of the location strategies of ‘globalised’ PS firms, the urban networks created by Chinese PS firms are not only an extension of urban networks at a global scale but also an embodiment of economic activities at other scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2010 World Expo in Shanghai provided a unique opportunity to examine emerging visions of utopian urbanism in the Global South, and the contradictions contained within them. The theme of the event was ‘Better City, Better Life’, and in its own promotional literature the Shanghai World Expo Coordinating Committee stressed the importance of sustainable, harmonious cities. The Expo was seen by many proponents as a way to educate the public about the opportunities and challenges cities face, and to identify and demonstrate solutions that harnessed the dynamism of urban space. At the same time, the Expo was itself a massive undertaking of urban redevelopment that dramatically reshaped parts of the downtown landscape and beyond. The aim of this article is to examine the vision of the World Expo that its proponents put forth, and to explore both inherent and extrinsic tensions between this vision and the trajectory of urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]