A Study On Urban High-Quality Development From The Perspective Of The Trade-Off Between Quality Of Life And Economic Amenities

Cities,gathering the population,industry and resources,are the center of people’s economic,political and social lives.The degree of urbanization shows the level of economic development and competitiveness of a country.Thus,the development of cities and the promotion of urbanization is an important and inevitable process in social and economic development,and also the only way to promote the modernization process of China and to achieve the overall construction of a well-off society.With the great improvement of China’s economic development,the urbanization process is accelerating.According to the National Bureau of Statistics,by 2019,there are 672 cities in the country,with an urban population of over 840 million and an urbanization rate reaching 60.6%.The 2021 government reports have pointed out that during the "14th five-year plan" period,the strategy of promoting the people-oriented new urbanization development should be insisted,and the urbanization of agricultural transfer population should be accelerated,increasing the urbanization rate to 65%.We should develop and expand the city circle and metropolitan areas,which play the leading role of all cities,so as to improve the quality of urbanization development and make cities more livable.During the urban development,the people-oriented new urbanization puts forward higher requirements such as the comfort and safety of the city,the convenience and harmony of life,and the ecological environment.While developing a city’s economy,its ecological environment,social security,and residents’ spiritual civilization needs are also important goals of high-quality development.Therefore,the high-quality development of a city depends on both economic quantity and residents’ life quality.On the premise of paying attention to the total economy,multiple needs of life,ecology and security should also be taken into account.And cities should promote regional coordinated and synchronous development,optimize the quality of economic development,and improve the quality of urban life.Based on this,this paper studies the high-quality development of cities from the quality of life and economic amenities,explores the coupling relationship between them,identifies and demonstrates the causal effect of quality of life and economic amenities on human capital and firm investments,and studies the path of urban high-quality development.This is of great practical significance for China to realize new urbanization,build a well-off society in an allaround way and promote socialist modernization.Quality of life refers to the comfort and convenience of living brought by city characteristics,such as a beautiful living environment,safe social security,convenient transportation facilities,rich entertainment and leisure services,etc.It is reflected in the living cost that residents are willing to pay for living in a city to enjoy its characteristics,which makes up for the convenience and comfort brought by the city.Therefore,from the economics perspective,the quality of life defined in this paper is reflected in the difference between housing price and wage income,meaning a city with high quality of life has relatively higher housing prices and lower incomes.That is because,the housing price higher than the income reflects a higher living cost,indicating residents’ greater willingness to pay for the convenience provided by urban characteristics and reflecting a better quality of life.Economic amenities refer to the production advantages and production efficiency brought by city characteristics.Cities with better economic amenities have a good business environment,optimized industrial structure,loose trade restrictions,and other advantages.These provide convenience for the firm to produce and improve total production and efficiency.It is worth noting that economic amenities reflect the productivity level in different perspectives,thus Albouy(2013,2016)used the words "firm productivity","trade productivity" and "local productivity" to represent the city’s economic amenity through transportation costs of tradable goods.However,different from the total factor productivity(TFP),economic amenity refers to the production convenience and the increased output brought by urban characteristics,rather than production factors.Therefore,in order to distinguish these two concepts,this paper uses "economic amenities" to describe the production advantages and efficiency brought by urban characteristics.When the city’s total income is constant,the government spending on providing public goods for residents’ consumption and investing in productive infrastructure for enterprises is limited,which leads to a substitution relationship between the improvement of residents’ living quality and the firms’ economic amenities.However,this substitution relationship is heterogeneous in different cities,so the quality of life and economic amenities interact with each other and are coupled.Based on this,this paper aims to study the trade-off and the interaction between the two,discuss whether firms and residents prefer different urban characteristics,and explore how to balance the development of both economy and people’s livelihood from the perspective of urban heterogeneity.Using economic theory and empirical analysis,this paper manually collects and uses data of prefecture-level and above cities in China to discuss the quantification,spatial distribution,influencing factors,mutual relationship of life quality and economic amenities,and the agglomeration effect of talents and capital.We also put forward policy suggestions for the balanced development of the urban economy and people’s livelihood,to realize high-quality urban development.The main conclusions in this research are as follows:(1)There is a significant substitution relationship between the quality of life and economic amenities.Improving the firm’s economic amenities will reduce residents’ living amenities.The degree of mutual influence reaches 90% and the development is not coordinated.However,in the developed cities with a GDP of more than RMB 1.05 trillion,a per capita GDP of more than RMB 125700,and a population of more than3.8 million,the substitution relationship is weakened,and the development can be balanced.In addition,there are regional differences in the inhibitory effect of economic amenities on the quality of life,which is the least in the eastern part,and the most in the central part.(2)In terms of spatial effect,the inhibitory effect of economic amenities on the quality of life is limited to local areas with no spillover effect.However,the quality of life in China’s Pearl River Delta and other regions has a high-high agglomeration.This positive spatial correlation mainly comes from the city’s scientific education and employment level.Rich educational resources and a high employment rate attract population inflows.Thus,improving the city’s scientific and technological innovation ability,and the wage income will help to improve the quality of life in the whole area.Besides,the city’s cultural resources,such as the cinemas,theaters,service industry,and so on,have negative spillover effects.By squeezing the cultural and leisure industry of surrounding cities,the quality of life in neighboring cities will be reduced.(3)Cities in different areas of China prefer different public features.In the East,residents prefer human leisure,medical resources,a warm climate environment,and have a higher demand for social security.In the middle,residents attach importance to the economic development,industrial structure,ecological greening,and educational resources of the city.While in the west,foreign investment,infrastructure construction,and cultural and educational resources are more important to improve the quality of life.In general,increasing green areas,improving public transportation,and enriching educational resources can provide residents with higher convenience and comfort.(4)There is a polarization in the path of China’s urban development,and the total economy and population of some cities are lower than the effective scale(the GDP is less than RMB 151.7 billion and the total population is less than 1.561 million)in China,such as Ezhou,Jiuquan and Panzhihua and so on.When the total economy and population are too low,it is difficult for small cities to consider both livability and commerciality,making them unable to attract residents to live and firms to product,and is hard to change the existing scale.However,in developed cities with big populations,the development is more coordinated.It is easier to attract enterprises and residents,thus further expand the scale of the economy and city.(5)The quality of life is one of the reasons for the net inflow of the population,especially for young people and highly educated people.Through the analysis of heterogeneous treatment effect,it is found that every 10% increase in the relative average of the quality of life can increase the inflow of 85000 people,of which the proportion of young people increases by 0.96%,and the proportion of highly educated people increases by 0.78%.Improving the city’s economic amenities can promote enterprises to move in and invest.Every 10% increase in the relative average of economic amenities can increase the total number of industrial enterprises above designated size by 1.8%,fixed asset investment by 0.32%,and actual foreign investment by 2.6%.Based on the above conclusions,the path of high-quality urban development is heterogeneous.In terms of the urban economic scale,the less developed cities with a per capita GDP of less than RMB 47000 should focus on improving economic amenities,increase enterprise production efficiency and per capita income,maintain sustainable economic development,and strengthen the construction of urban infrastructure.In developing cities with per capita GDP between RMB 47000 and RMB 125000,we should focus on residents’ quality of life,highlight the service function and ecological civilization construction of cities,promote the upgrading of firms and the transformation of economic structure,and focus on the development of industries with high technology content,low energy consumption,and less pollution and modern service industry.In developed cities with a per capita GDP of more than RMB 125000 and a total GDP of more than RMB 1.05 trillion,the economic amenities,firm production efficiency,and residents’ quality of life can be balanced improved.Meanwhile,social security should be strengthened,science,education,culture and health resources should be enriched,the employment rate should be increased,and the construction of spiritual civilization should be improved.In terms of urban population scale,in large cities with a population of more than 5 million,urban infrastructure construction should be strengthened,cultural connotation and openness should be enhanced.While social security and infrastructure should be improved in small cities with a population of less than 3 million.Overall,cities should promote employment to attract talents and investment,strengthen the education and training of talents,increase the investment and expenditure of scientific and technological innovation,making the city more attractive and competitive,so as to promote the development of surrounding cities and the whole area and form a city circle to enhance the international competitiveness.During the "14th five-year plan" period,China should further promote the peopleoriented new urbanization development strategy,and increase the urbanization rate to65%.As more and more population,industry and resource elements will gather in the city,higher requirements for the production and life of the city will be put forward.Therefore,the balanced development of urban economic amenities and residents’ quality of life are of great significance to the comprehensive construction of a well-off society.The coordinated promotion of economic growth and livelihood improvement provides an important practical basis for further promoting the process of urbanization,industrialization,socialist modernization and the high-quality development of cities in China.