Research On The Influence Of The Heterogeneity Of Urban Economic Development On Air Quality

As the advancement of urbanization process in our country, the coordination between provincial capital city’s economic development and its environment has become the focus of attention.Along with the expanding of city scale, people and enterprises are constantly to concentrate in cities, urban population structure, industrial structure and space structure is constantly changing, and the urban space range is expanding.At the same time, air quality issues in our country are increasingly highlighted, most of the capital city’s ratio of days up to standard air quality is low, the health damage and economic loss caused by the air pollution are still high.Environmental pollution brought by the cities’ economic development is particularly prominent in the provincial capital city, and become one of the focus of national policy.Scholars have done a lot of researches on the coordinated development of urban economy and environmental quality, and put forward the theory of EKC curve as the framework of research on the relationship between environment and economy, and scholars analyzed the relationship between environment and economy on the basis of the EKC model for different cities in different countries at different times, in order to test the existence of the "inverted U" hypothesis of EKC curve theory, but the relationship between environmental quality and economic development is complex, therefore scholars have not consistent conclusions.In terms of the present research status,a few scholars has studied the relationship between city size and environmental quality, between urban agglomeration and environmental quality, but scholars who study on the impact of cities’ economic development heterogeneity factors such as scale, agglomeration, structure and spatial on the environment quality are not much, but theory analysis results and the reality tell us that in addition to the urban scale and urban agglomeration factors, factors of urban structure and urban space also have an impact on environmental quality, and the cities ’ economic development heterogeneity factors in scale, agglomeration, structure and spatial will inevitably impact on the cities’ environmental quality.Therefore, based on the EKC curve, this dissertation takes the environmental air quality as example and takes the provincial capital city as the research objects, analyzes the impact of thecities’ economic development heterogeneity in scale, agglomeration, structure and spatial on the air quality. First, it explains the concept of the scale, agglomeration, structure and spatial heterogeneity factors of the cities’ economic development, and respectively analyzes the influence of four heterogeneous factors of cities ’ economic development on air quality from the overall level and subregional level.Secondly, this dissertation respectively carries on the theoretical analysis of the impact of four heterogeneous factors such as the urban size, urban agglomeration,urban structure and urban space on urban air quality, and based on the EKC curve respectively establishes proper model to make empirical studies for national overall cities.Again, on the basis of national overall analysis, capital cities are grouped respectively according to different size,different agglomeration, different structural and different space factors, then this dissertation respectively carries on the regression analysis of each group cities, to observe how the provincial capital cities’ economic development which exists heterogeneity will impact on air quality.Research conclusion of this dissertation is mainly manifested in the following points:First, whether from the point of overall or subregional, urban economic development impacts on air quality are dynamic effects, and four heterogeneous factors such as size, agglomeration,structure and space do influence the EKC curve shape and inflection point significantly.Second, except a few individual variables, the cities’ size and agglomeration factors have significant effect on air quality in general, but regression results of grouping cities which are grouped according to different size and different agglomeration are different from the general results, which illustrates that heterogeneity factors of cities in terms of size and agglomeration affects in a certain extent the cities’ economic development direction and degree of influence on air quality.Third, from the point of urban structure and spatial factors, influences of each of the variables in the urban structure factors on air quality are very significant, but only living space and green space in the space factor have significant influences on air quality.From regression results of grouping cities of different structures and different space as you can see, the influences of urban economic development on air quality in grouping cities are different from general cities because of the heterogeneity in structure and spatial factors.Finally, on the basis of theoretical analysis and empirical analysis, this dissertation argues that the impact of the urban economic development on air quality was caused by many factors,which should not be limited simply to the research paradigm of the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality.From the research conclusion of this dissertation, factors such as urban size, urban agglomeration, urban structure and urban space have different level of effects on air quality, therefore these comprehensive factors should be brought into the analysisframework of EKC which research the relationship between urban economy and environment quality. Based on these research conclusions, this dissertation puts forward corresponding policy recommendations relevant on the expansion of city scale, population concentration and industrial agglomeration, environmental protection investment structure and industrial structure upgrade and reasonable distribution of each functional area on the spatial aspects.