| Cities are playing an important role in the economic development for modern society,with the rapid expansion of the city,the population scale continues to expand,the city infrastructure has been constantly improved,and the changes are affecting the city growth in terms of city landscape and social economic features.City economics tries to explain the cities' dynamic developing process and understand the funcitons of cities,in order to better respond to the social and economic challenges facing the cities during their development process.It integrates analyzing methods and tools from sociology,economics and geography etc.,to analyze the characteristics and development law of urban system as thoroughly as possible.Residents of a country or an area usually migrate from rural areas to the cities to improve the living conditions and gain access to more and better economic opportunities,which leads to city transformation process characterised by population migration and industrial agglomeration.A significant portion of the world's goods and services are produced in cities,city-based markets not only support the transaction and consumption of these goods and services,but also help achieve optimal allocation for factors of production(labor,capital,land and other main places).The literature in urban and regional economics provides sufficient and reliable evidence for the significant positive correlation between urbanization level of a region or a country and the level of its economic development.In the accelerating process of globalization and regionalization,urban groups are not only playing an important role in the process of regional economic development in terms of its function in agglomeration,radiation and leading role,but also become a basic unit representing a nation to participate in the global competition and the international division of labor.The state has stressed the importance of the Urban Group to the national economy and social development three times in recent decades from the eleventh through the thirteenth “Five Year Plan”.Especially in 2016,the thirteenth "Five-Year plan" states clearly and specifically to enhance development of the urban group located in eastern area,to foster the urban groups located in middle and west area,to strengthen the development of the urban groups located in northeast,middle reaches of the Yangtze River,Chengdu Chongqing area,and Guan-Zhong Plain area,to guide the formation of more growth poles supporting regional economic development,to establish and improve the coordinative mechanism for urban group development,to promote intercity cross regional coordination on industrial division of labor,infrastructure,ecological protection,environmental governance etc.,and to achieve integration on high efficient development of the urban group.In 2014,China's ten major urban groups account for 16.83% of the country's total land area,accommodate 54.66% of its total population,while they produce 73.71% the nation's total output.Actually,the social and economic development of the ten major urban groups determines the overall level of China's social and economic development.With the acceleration of China's urbanization process,it is reasonable to believe,in the next few decades,that the population of these major urban groups and the output they produce will be further concentrated and expanded.In fact,whichever the stage an economy is in,the role of its urban economy is undoubtedly of great importance to the national economy as a whole,especially for countries and regions experiencing rapid urbanization.Therefore,issues related to the economic efficiency of cities and urban groups have attracted great attention from researchers in many fields.This research project focuses on the impact of the spatial structure and the inter-city connection within an urban group has on its economic efficiency.A systematic and comprehensive review of the theories and literature at home and abroad is the first step of the research work,through reading a lot of relevant theories and literature,and combining the reality of China's social and economic background,the overall understand of the relevant research has been gained,and also the shortcome in previous research achievements has been found,and then the starting point of this study is set;Many factors affect the overall economic efficiency of an urban group,this research focuses on two core factors,they are: the spatial structure of an urban group and the intensity of the inter-city linkage within it;then,the theoretical mechanism of how the spatial structure of an urban group and the intensity of its inter-city linkage can affect its economic efficiency is discussed in detail.Next section is the quantitative analysis which involves three main lines: Firstly,the quantitative analysis of the spatial structure of an urban group.In addition to size,density and other traditional variables,this study also pays special attention to another two dimensions of spatial structure of an urban group;they are monocentricity-polycentricity dimension and concentration-dispersion dimension.After defining these two dimensions of spatial structure clearly,this study deeply discusses the quantitative methods for spatial structure under those dimensions.After that,a comparative analysis is done on the spatial structure characteristics between the ten major urban groups in China during 1994-2014.Secondly,this study quantitatively analyzes the intensity of inter-city connectivity within ten major urban groups.The intensity of inter-city connectivity is measured by a modified gravity mode,the modifications are reflected in two aspects: on one hand,it replaces the total population or output variables used in traditional gravity model with a comprehensive quality of a city;on the other hand,it uses a comprehensive time distance between cities instead of the linear distance in traditional gravity model.Then,using the modified gravity model,it measures the intensity of inter-city connectivity of the ten major urban groups in 2014 and makes a comparative analysis between these urban groups.Thirdly,this study evaluates the economic efficiency of the ten major urban groups.Using the method of data envelopment analysis,it selects four input indicators and one output indicator to calculate the annual total factor productivity of the ten major urban groups in China during 1994-2014,and carries a comparative analysis between them.After that,the study goes into a section for empirical analysis.Based on the data collected from the above mentioned quantitative analysis,this study establishes an empirical analysis model in the last section,TFP of a urban group is introduced as the explained variable,the urban group's spatial structure and intensity of its inter-city linkage are introduced into to model as two main explanatory variables.After controlling other variables that may affect the economic efficiency of an urban group including two regional dummy variables,it empirically tests how the spatial structure and the intensity of inter-city connectivity may affect the economic performance of an urban group as a whole.The first part of this study is the Introduction;it introduces the background,purpose and significance of this study,it provides a research framework,illustrates the relationship between different parts of the study,and presents research methods and tools are to be used,and finally the possible innovation of the study.The second session of the study is the Theory and Literature Review;it first carries out a systematic and comprehensive review of the relevant basic theories and literatures.The basic theories reviewed include Theories of Spatial Structure,Theories of Urban Network,and the Theories of Urban System,the spatial structure theories cover the Theory of Growth Pole,the Theory of Point-Axis Development,the Central Field Theory and the Theory of Core and Periphery.Existing literatures that are closely related to this study include research on metropolitan and urban group spatial structure,literatures on city network,and studies on internal relation and hierarchical structure of urban groups,both done by domestic and overseas researchers.The third part of the study are the main parts of this research.This section of the study involve theoretical analyses on how the characteristics of the spatial structure of an urban group and the intensity of the inter-city connectivity within it may affect its overall economic efficiency;and how to quantify the characteristics of the spatial structure of an urban group and how to calculate the intensity of the inter-city relationship within an urban group.The first half of this section is the Dynamic Evolution of the Spatial Structure of the Urban Group and the Impact on its Economics Efficiency.It introduces the common rules of the dynamic evolution of the spatial structure of the urban group,and theoretically discusses the mechanism of how spatial structure of an urban group may affect its economic performance,and finally presents the methods used in this study on how to quantitatively describe the spatial structure of an urban group,and this is the corner stone for further analysis in following sessions.The latter part of section three is the Measurement on the Intensity of the Inter-City Connectivity within an Urban Group and the Mechanism of How this Intensity may Affect its Economic Performance.It first introduces the method for measuring the intensity of inter-city connectivity within an urban group,which is a modified Gravity Model;then it focuses on how to describe the hierarchical structure within an urban group based on the connection intensity,and finally in this part it discusses the urbanization economy from a city network perspective of view,which emphasizes on the mechanism of how inter-city connectivity may influence the economic performance of an urban group as a whole.The fourth part is the Analysis on the Characteristics of the Spatial Structure and Inter-City Connectivity of China's ten Major Urban Groups.This part is one of the core contents of the research,and it is also a transition and connection between theoretical and empirical analysis.It first describes and makes comparative analysis in details on the economic development status of the ten major urban groups,it primarily focuses on the level of output and industrial structure and other social and economic indicators;then,it respectively provides a quantitative description and a comparative analysis on the spatial characteristics of the ten major urban groups from 1994 to 2014,in terms of monocentricity or polycentricity,and centralization or dispersion;after that,it measures the intensity of inter-city connection within each major urban group by using modified Gravity Model based on data in 2014,and visualized the results with Arc GIS and QGIS;in addition,the cities within each urban group are classified into different hierarchies according to each city's impact potential in 2014,and a description and comparison of the hierarchical structure of each urban group are provided,and also the results are visualized into maps.The fifth part is also one of the key parts of this research;it is an empirical test on the theoretical discussion in previous chapters.First,it calculates the DEA-Malmquist TFP index for each urban group in each year during 1994-2014,this total factor productivity is taken as proxy variable for the economic efficiency of each urban group;then,it measures the spatial structure of each urban group and the intensity of inter-city connectivity between each two cities within each urban group in each year during 1994-2014,by using the methods introduced in previous sessions of this research;finally,it establishes some empirical models testing how the spatial structure and the intensity of inter-city connectivity may affect the economic performance of an urban group as a whole.The sixth part is the conclusion of this research.It briefly summarizes the research work,the research conclusion and the research questions which deserve further research attention.The result of this research shows: the urban group with more concentrated spatial structure experiences lower economic efficiency;the urban group with more polycentric spatial structure shows higher economic efficiency,the degree of polycentricity has significant positive influence on its economic efficiency;the size of an urban group,in terms of its non-agricultural population,has a significant positive impact on its economic efficiency;the intensity of inter-city connectivity within an urban group has a significant positive impact on its overall economic performance;the urban group with more population,compared with smaller size urban group,will benefit more from its polycentric spatial structure.Based on above analysis,this study suggests: to enhance inter-city connectivity within city groups through the establishment and improvement of the multi-dimensional traffic system;to expand the influence of cities by the promoting “comprehensive quality” of cities;to improve the internal hierarchical structure within city groups by encouraging the development of sub central cities;to foster polycentric spatial structure through the overall planning on the development of city groups. |
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