The Research Of The Coordinated Development Of China’s City Clusters In The New Era: From The Perspective Of Polycentric Spatial Structure

The issue of coordinated development of polycentric city clusters in the new era has risen to a national strategy.Its development not only needs to focus on the balance of development,and the quality of development,but also aims at its progress and outcome shared by all people.Although the urbanization of capitalist countries under the guidance of western economics treats city clusters as their future development direction,the problems of slums and polarization within city clusters in capitalist countries have been intensified.In contrast,the great practice of socialism with Chinese characteristics guided by Marxist political economy is based on changes of the main contradictions of society,treats the requirement for the development of productive forces as fundamental driving force,and centralizes the transformation of social production relations.In doing so,it promotes the development of polycentric city clusters.The pattern of coordinated development among large,medium and small cities and small towns within China’s polycentric city clusters is gradually cultivated.From the perspective of theoretical study: the theories instructing the development of city clusters are mainly generated from western economic field,while Marxist political economy has not yet been explored in regard to this topic.One of the reasons of this theoretical blank of Marxist pollical economics in studying city clusters is that western economics has a long tradition in investigating and practicing the development and construction of city clusters.Another reason is that the factor of space,receives less research attention in Marxist political economy,since emphasis is more put on the factor of time,in analyzing the laws of economics.Thus,it is necessary to build an analytical framework of Marxist political economy by encompassing the relevant research coming from the Marxist.Moreover,the principal contradictions have changed in China.Under this background,it is a big challenge to develop polycentric city clusters more balanced and more ‘people-oriented’.The conclusion of this paper: polycentric city clusters appear after the productivity increases to a certain level.In different stages of the productivity development,city cluster has its different forms.It starts from ‘fortifications’ for defense,‘markets’ for exchange of goods,‘cities’ after the second big social division of labor,then to ‘polycentric city cluster’ after the function of research and development separated from manufacturing function.Additionally,the polycentric structure could also benefit the productivity.Due to this reason,the cultivation of polycentric city cluster needs to follow the requirements of development of productive forces and change the production relations of city clusters.Finally,the ‘national main body function area planning’,urban traffic network layout,‘urban agglomeration development plan’ and ‘national new urbanization planning’ are suitable for realizing the ‘people-oriented’ polycentric city clusters coordinated development.From the perspective of empirical study: functionally polycentric structure is a sustainable way for the development of urban agglomerations.However,there is currently no empirical evidence to show how to cultivate functionally polycentric structure,and the hypothesis that the functionally polycentric structure could reduce the economic gap between cities should also be proved.Based on 143 panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2000 to 2016,and the use of heterogeneity panel granger causality test and other methods,this paper empirically analyzes the formation mechanism of functionally polycentric structure-measured by the paper collaborated between cities from Web of Science Core Collection Database-and the coordination internal mechanism caused by functionally polycentric structure.The results show that accessibility,urban industrial division,industrial agglomeration,urbanization and urban agglomeration plans promote the formation of functionally polycentric city clusters,and functionally polycentric city clusters also lead to the improvement of accessibility and urban industrial division so as to intensify the structure themselves.At last,functionally polycentric structure can promote the coordinated development of city clusters through the cooperation mechanism,sharing mechanism and diffusion mechanism.According to these results,the eastern coast areas should develop their functionally polycentric through dispersion,while the west and central areas through agglomeration.However,all of these ways could not be done without the role of government.From the perspective of suggestions: solving the problem of regional coordinated development of city clusters could start from the cultivation of functionally polycentric structure:(1)In terms of regional heterogeneity,the way of the cultivation of functionally polycentric structure should be in accordance with different conditions of regions,such as,cultivating monocentric structure in regions with the low level of agglomerations by increasing their policy attractive in the Economic and Technological Development Zone;cultivating polycentric structure in regions with the high level of agglomerations by the diffusion of industries in the central cities;cultivating polycentric structure in regions with the high level of urbanization by the diffusion of labors in the central cities;cultivating polycentric structure in regions with the low level of urbanization by improving their accessibility and strengthen their division between cities;(2)In terms of ‘hukou’ policies,government should adjust these policies according to comparative advantage and environmental capacity of different regions,so as to increase the population density of more than one city in eastern coast city clusters,and increase the population density in one central city in western city clusters.Then,the problem of regional coordinated development of city clusters could be solved by making use of the mechanism of coordination in functionally polycentric structure:(1)cultivating the division system,in which central cities play as the role of research and development,while the sub-central cities role as the manufacturing function.(2)the systematic design of public facilities can enhance the interaction activities between cities so as to realize the ‘borrowed size’,which could help small cities catch up big cities.(3)Economic joint committees should be founded among different city clusters,so as to break down the market segmentation between cities and reduce the phenomenon of industry isomorphism.