Study On The Driving Forces And Economic Impact Of Urban Sprawl In China

Urban spatial structure is a very important concept for urbanization process.Many cities in modern China have been less compact with lower population density,which is named“urban sprawl”by scholars.However,existing literatures on urban sprawl in China is rather scant.This dissertation tries to reveal the driving force of urban sprawl in China,and cast light on the economic impact of urban sprawl.With the help of GIS technique and DMPS night-time light data,Landscan population distribution data,the new urban sprawl indices improved by this dissertation are able to be calculated in order to show the sprawling tendency for most prefectural cities?including cities directly administrated by central government,which is Beijing,Shanghai,Tianjin and Chongqing?in China.Most cities in China in the first decade in 21^st century are sprawling quite rapidly,and it is more obvious in big Chinese cities and in North China,such as Northeast China or Hebei Province.It is concluded that regional competition led by local governments is a key driving force for urban land leasing,usually faster than the population growth,and subsequent urban sprawl in nowadays China.On the contrary,fiscal gap is not an important driving force compared with regional competition.Population growth does not play a significant role either,which is very different from those researches derived from mono-centric city theoretical models;meanwhile,the market fluctuation of land demand is an important determinants of“leap-frog sprawl”.That is to say,the driving forces and determinants of urban sprawl in China are quite different from those mentioned in previous literatures from western developed countries such as United States,mainly due to the urbanization process in China is led and guided by governmental forces to a large extent.The economic impacts are investigated both at regional level and at individual level,the former of which is measured by night-time light growth.After the potential endogenous problem of urban sprawl is alleviated to some extent,this paper uses calibrated DMSP night-time light data to measure economic growth,and urban sprawl indices are calculated with the help of Landscan population database as mentioned before.We use dynamic panel data model to study the impact of urban population size and urban sprawl on regional economic growth in China.Several findings are concluded:urban sprawl is not conducive to regional economic growth,but larger city population benefits economy;furthermore,urban sprawl plays a more negative role in smaller cities or cities with higher proportion of manufacture.So,for the sake of“new urbanization strategy”,urban sprawl,especially in smaller cities should be controlled more tightly.In the next chapter,the economic impact on individual level is quantified by personal wage income provided by CHFS?China Household Finance Survey?data.After the general equilibrium model is built to illustrate the relationship between urban sprawl,urban geometric shape and real wage income theoretically,it is found that higher urban sprawl indices are significantly correlated with lower wage income in the empirical research,and large urban population size brings about higher real wage income.That is to say,urban sprawl has negative economic impact in general.meanwhile,more equilateral urban geometric shape is also beneficial for labor income.Moreover,better urban public trafic infrastructure,such as higher road area per capita,could abate the negative economic impact of less equilateral urban geometry,while,in some less equlateral cities,urban sprawl is much less detrimental for labor income.Conclusions are summarized in the last chapter,it is clear to see the innovations and new findings in our research work compared with previous one,which is also inspiring for political suggestion for urbanization in China,especially in the background of"new urbanization strategy".