Research On The Harmonious Development Of Population, Resource, And Environment In Frontier Urban Economic Circle

With rapid economic development of China in recent years, due to the tremendous cluster effect produced by urban economic circles based on the center cities, urban economic circle has become the most effective and efficient way of driving regional economy. A majority of cities have launched the construction of urban economic circles in pursuit of a high-speed development. The frontier regions, limited by the geographic location, policies and resource, cannot achieve the same development circumstances and standards as the coastal regions in the east, can only pay more attention to and rely more on the urban economic circles than the eastern region. The urban economic circles in frontier regions play significant roles in regional economic growth.The urban economic development is challenged by a demand for harmonious development with population, resource and environment when experiencing a rapid development in urbanization. It is crucial to foster the development of urban economic circles, while it is unnegligible to maintain a sustainable development of urban economic circles. A sustainable development of urban economic circles requires reasonable plan on the core indexes that influence the urban economic circles, such as population, resource and environment. Whether urban economic circles in frontier regions can achieve a sustainable and harmonious development in population, resource and environment is the key for a rapid and sustainable development of frontier economy.The dissertation constructs a comprehensive integration of theoretical model (RPREE Model) for harmonious development of regional population, resource, environment andeconomy, and sub-system carrying capacity model, inter-system relevance model, inner predicting model and inner optimizing model. It also creates an objective function of the theoretical model (RPRE Model) for harmonious development of regional population, resource and environment by introducing decision variables and model targets thus analyzing constraints, which provides possibilities for empirical analysis. As population, resource and environment are the prerequisites of regional sustainable development, the dissertation concentrates on the integrating branch system carrying capacity model, chooses the urban economic circles in Central Yunnan as a case study, which analyzes the impacts of urban economic circles in Central Yunnan on local development in terms of population gathering power, resource carrying capacity and environmental carrying capacity. Based on the above analysis, the dissertation discusses how to realize sustainable population gathering power, resource carrying capacity and environmental carrying capacity for frontier urban economic circles. Furthermore, the dissertation sets up an evaluation index system for population, resource and environment of frontier urban economic circles, which includes population sub-system, resource sub-system and environment sub-system. Taking the sample of Central Yunnan urban economic circles as evaluation object, the dissertation analyzes the comprehensive development standards of sub-systems of population, resource and environment through principle component analysis, and analyzes the relevance and compatibility between and among the three sub-systems by creating a coupling degree model.Case study shows that located in western frontier region, the Urban Economic Circle in Central Yunnan enjoys a high population density and a low economic density. It aggregates more people than neighboring prefectures and cities. However, the water resource carrying capacity and land resource carrying capacity of the Urban Economic Circle in Central Yunnan are relatively weak, demanding external intervention such as water transferring and adjusting land planning to enhance the resource carrying capacity of Central Yunnan. In terms of atmosphere, sound and water resource, the Urban Economic Circle in Central Yunnan has a relatively strong environmental carrying capacity. Generally speaking, compared with the urban economic circles in the developed coastal areas, though the Central Yunnan Urban Economic Circle is located in the frontier, with a low economic growth level, it still has an inharmonious development of population, resources and environment according to an evaluation of population gathering power, resource carrying capacity and environmental carrying capacity. The population gathering power of the Urban Economic Circle in Central Yunnan is strong but the resource carrying capacity is weak resulting in a fragile environmental carrying capacity. The dissertation argues that the Urban Economic Circles in the frontier area cannot copy the development models of the Urban Economic Circles in the eastern developed areas. The Urban Economic Circles in the frontier area must explore their own development model that suits their resource carrying capacity and environmental carrying capacity.