Planning World City In China

With the acceleration of economic globalization and information, world cities having a decisive impact on the future economic restructuring, so the research on world cities has gained ever more attention from both domestic and international academic circle. Based on the results of international and national research, this dissertation expounds systematically and makes a case study on the principles of world city.This dissertation is divided into three main sections: introduction, main body and summarization.The introduction elaborates the purposes of studying world city, as well as basic train of thoughts in research and writing of this paper. Meanwhile, according to comparisons in similar studies between China and abroad, the paper comments some representative views in detail, and attaches much importance on goals and actual significance of this paper.The main body consists of four chapters. Chapter Two is theoretical foundation research. This chapter expounds world cities constitute the key nodes or command points that exercise power over other cities in a system of cities and, thus, the world economy. The power of world cities is inherently relational: cities do not have power in and of themselves; they have power to the extent that they function as command points and centers of planning and thus establish the framework in which other cities operate in the world economy.Globalization is argued to be generating a new geography of centrality and marginality in the world system because it has renewed interest in the place and role of cities in the international system. Recent literature proposes that the fate of cities has become increasingly tied to their position in international flows of investment and trade. By the end of the 20th century, power in the world economy become even more concentrated in the hands of multinationals sited in a small number of cities located in core countries. To the extent that this correspondence between the centralization of control within the firm and the world economy grows, geographical specialization will come to reflect the hierarchy of corporate decision making. Cities tend to produce a hierarchical division of labor between geographical regions corresponding to the vertical division of labor within the firm. It would tend to centralize high-level decision-making occupations in a few key cities in the advanced countries. The structure of the world city system would come to reflect the structure of the modern multinational firm.Chapter Three and Four are an. After 20 years of economic reforms, China has a lot of experience in international trade and has a lot of potential to create global city. With the shift of global economic growth center to the Asian Pacific Rim, the emergence of new world cities will be one of the most important characteristics of city development in China. The paper point out that China is facing of the important choice how to put its urban network on world city network track. Beijing and Shanghai are emerging world cities. This paper summarizes that the formation of world city falls into five successive phases and two models through the analyses on the process and features of 30 global cities. Comparing with this, Chinese cities'first goal is to be a world economy and trade center. Some strategies and approaches to accelerate construction of cities to establish world economy, trade and financial center are put forward.Chapter Five is a case study on Beijing. Beijing has just announced an impressive plan to transform itself into a world city with unique characteristics and eventual join the ranks of global cities like New York, Tokyo and London. Beijing has its own advantages and disadvantages for the pursuing of a world economy and trade center. The most important disadvantage is that the transport cost of the international trade is high, which conditions the development of international trade and global supply chain-cluster, and leads hollow headquarter. Because Beijing is not a seaport, an overwhelming 70 percent of Beijing's foreign trade goods were transported via sea routes, mostly via the ports in Tianjin. Whereas urban integration is a process of adjustments and evolvements of relation between adjacent cities from disorder to order, and also is the expected result of development under object control, the author argues that it is the best way for Beijing to integrate with Tianjin to consummate Beijing's urban function. This part emphasizes that urban integration does not mean local coordination existing only a period between merely two cities. It is some kind of high-ranking government behavior. Some approaches to accelerate the urban Integration between Beijing and Tianjin are put forward in the paper.Through induction, centralization and survey of this dissertation, the final summarization part forms 6 basic conclusions and 3 creative conclusions. On basis of knowledge in this course and related field, this part also sums up potential contributions of this paper. This part also points out the weakness of the whole dissertation, and puts forward remaining thesis for further study.