Research On The Development Path Of Small Towns In Hubei Province

With the active evolvement of small towns after the reform and opening in China, the small towns are able to play the same important role as the cities, becoming a significant power in the whole urbanization process. Under the present background which keeps promoting urbanization in the whole country, the potential adverse effect of small towns should not be underestimated. However, due to their weak foundation and multi-faceted dilemma, they have a long way to go in the future.Aiming at the advancing of the whole urbanization progress in Hubei Province, through site visiting, interviewing and survey questionnaires, field research was carried out on 57 typical small towns, acquiring time-sensitive and targeted one-hand in-formation, covering the social, economic and spatial aspects of small towns in Hubei Province. Based on the typical cases, by literature reviewing and generalization, the essay systematically analyzes the comprehensive background, history, features, power dilemma and developing potential of the case towns and proposes the development path finally.From the background and experience analysis, the study main contains three parts, that is, history and features of small town development in Hubei Province, potential de-velopment of small towns in Hubei Province, development path of small towns in Hubei Province.In the first part, the essay firstly divides the development process of small towns in Hubei province to four periods. After that, it generalizes the related features of them on spatial, population and industrial level, finding out that the development power of small towns in Hubei Province is limited, while the reasons of that is discussed later on. In the second part, the essay discussed the external opportunities of small towns in Hubei Province at first. Then founded on the classification of the main power types with the case towns, Discussion is made on the regional distribution features and ad-vantages of the different types.In the third part, targeting at different main power type towns, five selected functional paths are proposed at first, which is, to be integrated, to be industrial, to be commercial, to be tourism-oriented or to be service-oriented. After that, guidance of small town function and spatial feature is posed on different spatial regions of Hubei Province, while a brief recommendation of recent positioning in 100 focus towns in the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" of Hubei Province is given as well. Finally, the solution to solve the power dilemma is put forward on four aspects, including external market, internal resource, policy support and institutional guarantee.