Research On Top Ten Urban Agglonerations’ City Size Distribution And It’s Influencing Factors

Economic growth is highly correlated with urbanization, which has been the chief driving powers of economic growth in China. However, urbanization facilitates economic growth on condition that the hierarchy of cities and the industrial structure are reasonable. The constant competition and cooperation between interconnected cities give rise to urban agglomeration. Cities which have competitive edge attract elements concentration and have priority to develop. They can drive other cities’ development through radiation effect, which promotes regional economic integration. Cities in the urban agglomeration get different level, scale and character. The combined action of diverse aspects decides the status of cities in urban agglomeration, which forms the urban agglomeration hierarchy system. A reasonable urban agglomeration hierarchy system is in favor of sustaining economic growth. The purpose of this study is to analysis urban hierarchy and the cause of it’s change with the rank-size rule, based on the view of city size distribution. The ultimate goal is to optimize urban hierarchy system and facilitate economic growth.Top ten urban agglomerations(include Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Central-Southern of Liaoning, Guanzhong, Zhongyuan, Shandong Peninsula, The West coast of the Taiwan Straits, Mid—Yangtze, Sichuan-Chongqing urban agglomerations) support one-third population of China with ten percent land, and have created more than fifty percent GDP of China, therefore, they can be the ten backbone of economic growth in China. The research on urban agglomerations hierarchical influence factors, which takes ten top urban agglomerations as objects, is meaningful for the development of all the urban agglomerations in China. Research on top ten urban agglomerations’ city size distribution and it’s influencing factors is helpful to analysis urban hierarchy and the cause of it’s development and change, which also means a lot to other urban agglomerations.Urban size is not urban hierarchy itself, but in statistical sense, it is usually used as the substitute indicator of urban hierarchy. This research take population size as substitute indicator to divide urban hierarchy, then computed Pareto exponent from 2003 to 2012, with the rank-size distribution model. After that, analyzed the city size distribution and the urban hierarchy system of ten top urban agglomerations according to Pareto exponent of year 2003,2008 and 2012. At last, choose seven indexes from economy developing level, attraction power, radiation capability, science, technology and culture, as independent variable to analyze the influence factors of top ten urban agglomerations’ city size distribution. They are non-agricultural industries’ output share, gross fixed asset formation, FDI, social retail-goods, passenger volume, cost of science and technology, cost of education.The conclusion is that non-agricultural industries’ output share, social retail-goods, passenger volume, gross fixed asset formation and FDI have striking impact on city size distribution. We proposed five measures to optimize urban hierarchy system after analyzed what the five factors meaning. The five measures are accelerating industrial structure upgrading, expanding the consumer demand and optimizing consumption environment, improving the transportation infrastructure construction and transportation conditions, strengthening supervision and optimizing investment structure, establishing healthy marketing mechanism and promoting elements flowing freely. The research still analyzed the provincialism differences between top ten urban agglomerations to learn the influencing factors of city size distribution better and give more practicable proposes.