Spatial Structure's Economic Performance Of Metropolitan Regions In China

Taking the immaterial institutional spatial structure and the material physical spatial structure as two levels, the author studies the mechanisms and laws of how spatial structure determines the economic performance in metropolitan regions and establishes a complex map between these two elements. Basing on these conclusions and taking Jinan metropolitan region as example, regulation models and optimizing measures are finally discussed. Main arguments includes as below:There have important relations between spatial structure and economic performance. In another word, spatial structure itself is those social characteristics of different perspectives that determine the spatial economic performance. The economic performance in the other hand will inspirit micro spatial behavior and result in reconstruction of macro spatial structure. So these two social sides are a cycle of cause and effect, also a dynamic closed-loop feedback to each other.Spatial structure has six dimensions, which have different mechanisms influence on economic performance. The geography environment provides the site or background for economic & social activities, and then affects economic performance. Also, the scale & density structure will provide the basis of agglomeration for economic & social activities. The spatial form will provide outside border and inner accessibility network for economic and social activities. The social and economic structure can supply the origin of economic or social capital and network. The innovation structure can produce knowledge spillover. And the spatial institutional structure will provide reasonable right boundaries for daily economic & social activities. All these structures will then affects economic performance.In particular social and economic background in China, although the metropolitan region is one level of urban economic area in geographical sense, more essentially it is an institutional area, that is a geographical unit supports and implements some related institutional frames. Metropolitan region is a spatial arrangement that can have common restriction and motivation on all the local governments, NGOs, companies and individuals. It's an institutional innovation for the failure of supply regional public goods by the market or separate governments.Spatial institutional structure of metropolitan region is more a basic element in determining the whole economic performance than that of the material spatial structures. The mechanism of improving economic performance by institutional structure is that, it could reduce all the costs of information, coordination, and maneuver at one time, and encourage regional coordination, labor division and cooperation effectively. All these need not to change the decentralized structure of the governments and the relationship between the government and the market, but through a series of institutional innovation include metropolitan regional governance, metropolitan regional planning, clarifying rights in government affairs, and scarce resource control, etc., to achieve the purpose of enhancing regional economic performance.To improve the economic performance of metropolitan regions in China could follow two paths. The initial statuses of these two paths are respectively single core centralization and multi-core decentralization. As the gross performance increase, the region would possibly experience several development phases, perhaps agglomeration or pervasion, but the different paths would reach a same way. The GINI coefficient is likely to converge to an appropriate balance after alteration up and down, and form a comparatively even also concentrated spatial economic structure in the end. The mechanism of material spatial structure of metropolitan region determining the economic performance also consists in being able to enhance regional coordination and cooperation. But rely on this only would get an oversimplified linear mapping connection between spatial structure and economic performance. A more actual relationship depends on a trade-off: regional urbanization and the agglomeration of innovative sectors have significant impact on gross performance, but are ambiguous for structural performance, and have the possibility of performance reduction. Scale of the core city, balanced degree of city network and government centralization or decentralization lie the other side of the trade-off. Distinctively, they have significant effect on structural in stead of gross performance, and also have the possibility to reduce whole performance. Services division among central cities, industries division and integration between inner and outer rings, industries autocephaly among sub-areas in the outer ring are three key weights to improve comprehensive performance. These social structure elements have both significant and same direction impact on gross and structural performance, and play a balancing role in economic performance trade-off.Improving institutional arrangements of metropolitan regions, actively promoting urbanization, constructing a more balanced transportation network, and leading the R&D sectors to agglomerate in the core city are the common structure regulating strategies for metropolitan regions in China at the purpose of optimizing performance. For the long-term planning of those metropolitan regions on the evolution path from non-equilibrium to equilibrium, and the near-future planning of those mature metropolitan regions in the development phase of spillover, controlling growth of the core city and promoting agglomeration of small and medium-scale cities, dispersing service functions in the core city and fostering a service division system, decentralizing manufacturing industrial functions and increasing integration and vertical division between inner and outer rings, guiding the outer ring separated into several functional self-sustaining sub-areas and promoting industries to agglomerate and integrate independently, constructing a more balanced network of cities, and taking a more centralized structure of the administrative division etc. are also effective methods to improve economic performance. The plan methods for the metropolitan regions in the opposite path or development phase would also be opposite. Jinan Metropolitan Region has the trend that towards more even no matter from the evolution path or the development phase. According to the foregoing conclusions, corresponding spatial structure optimizing countermeasures are discussed.