Research On City Function Positioning Of The Middle And Southern City Cluster Of Liaoning

With the acceleration of urbanization, the development model of city cluster has become an effective and important way to support regional economic development,and also the spatial organization of participating in regional division of work and competition within a wider range. This thesis studies the middle and southern city cluster of Liaoning province, and focuses on City function positioning and coordinated regional development, trying to build a development model with a reasonable industrial division and an accurate function positioning and to find appropriate policy measures to promote the coordinated development of the middle and southern city cluster of Liaoning province.Liaoning province is an old industrial base of the country. The middle and southern area of Liaoning province is both the core and the leading area of economic development of Liaoning province. Since the implementation of China’s Northeast strategy in 2003, Liaoning coastal economic zone and Shenyang Economic Zone have become development strategies at the national level, which highlights the important role of Liaoning in Northeast China and even Northeast Asia. However, this area has been going through a slow process of Industrial restructuring and economic development because of the unreasonable division of work, Identical industrial structure and similar function positioning. The middle and southern area of Liaoning has strong Industrial strength, abundant natural resources and policy support, thus it can go onto a balanced development path with a reasonable industrial division and an accurate function positioning.The middle and southern city cluster of Liaoning has a good development foundation, has the relatively high level of urbanization, and is the most economically developed and most population concentrated area in Northeast China. However,compared with the other three city clusters in China, The middle and southern city cluster of Liaoning still lacks of clear development objective, unified coordination and planning, strong radiation driving ability, clear division of work, reasonable industrial structure, and good urban system.To solve these problems, this thesis conducts a comprehensive analysis on functions and industry development urban function and industry development of the middle and southern city cluster of Liaoning from the perspective of comprehensive Development Index, industrial structure and conditions of competitive industries, the degree of communications between cities, and Self-functional positioning of each city in this cluster. Dual-core feature of the middle and southern city cluster of Liaoning is the main clue throughout this thesis. This feature has apparently affected the Comprehensive Development Strength, the communication intensity, the IndustryStructure and the Function positioning. This feature is both an advantage and also a disadvantage. If both the two core cities are strong, this will benefit the industrial transfer and diffusion to other cities within the cluster. If the two core cities share an economic hinterland, they will probably compete for natural Resources and policy support to gain more competitiveness in this area or in this country, which would hinder the division and cooperation of cities within this cluster to some extent,and harm the Overall development of this cluster. Identical Function positioning and similar Leading Industry will cause low-level redundant construction and waste of resources. So each city should have reasonable function positioning and choose different leading industry accordingly to achieve a coordinated development.To build a development model with a reasonable division of work and accurate function positioning, this thesis points out the relationship between industrial division and city functions from the general sense. The Leading Industry of a city decides the leading function of the city. With the deepening of the division, Division of work among cities includes division of work among industries, division of work among products and division of work among different phases of value chain. This has provided more choices and conditions to achieve more reasonable division of labor and more accurate function positioning. From the experiences of other city cluster,coordinated development of city cluster needs accurate function positioning,Concentration and radiation of core cities and cooperation between governments. So that each city can improve its overall competitiveness, play its own advantage,upgrade its development Level and achieve more benefits from regional Development.This thesis points out an idea of the function positioning and leading industries for the middle and southern city cluster of Liaoning.Reasonable division of work among industries, and dislocated development of cities can be the key to coordinated development. The premise is a good economic geographical distribution. Each city has its own characteristics and a different spatial layout. This thesis has built a coordinated development model of “two cores, twopoles,one axis, one circle and multi nodes” for the middle and southern city cluster of Liaoning. That is to say, Shenyang and Dalian should develop into two core cities which can be two growth poles of this city cluster. Gather resources along this axis, to better play the role of concentration and radiation. Middle cities of Liaoning and coastal economic zone of Liaoning should seek for more cooperation to form an integrated developing force. By jointly building a sound and efficient regional infrastructure network, production Factors should move faster to lay the foundation for coordinated development.During the development process of city cluster, most inter-regional problems can only be solved through cooperation. Theoretically, reasonable division of work and collaborative development can improve the efficiency of resource use, and play their respective advantages and enhance the overall regional output and income. However,there have been many obstacles to cooperation between cities in reality, so cities often have similar function positioning, irrationally identical industries and products, more competition rather than cooperation. The cities are lack of scale Economies and collaborative development. That’s why it is so important for the middle and southerncity cluster of Liaoning to achieve a functional reasonable division of work,coordinated development and Innovative mechanisms. Through building a coordination mechanism, Interest-sharing mechanisms and interest compensation mechanism, accelerating market integration, Improving laws and regulations and promote the macro management system, the middle and southern city cluster of Liaoning should be able to achieve a more balanced and coordinated development and the overall level of development and competitiveness should be promoted.