Formation Mechanism Of Urban Borough Size Between Domestic And Abroad Based On Scale Theory

The competition of cities under the background of globalization is intensifying.Apart from the external opportunity should each city to capture for enhancing their competitiveness,to satisfy the diverse demand of their citizens is another challenge.And it has brought profound changes to their internal governance structure and mode.Borough as the sub administration of urban plays a very important role in the structure of governance,especially in Chinese cities.With the tendency of urbanization,the internal structure of cities in China becomes increasingly complex,especially in some huge boroughs.And the increasing gap among boroughs leads some difficulties to city management.Currently,research is not deep into the microcosmic field.On the other hand,besides those on reform and adjustment of regionalization,research on size phenomenon and development mechanism also needs improvement.This paper compares scale development process and scale struggle of different subjects in typical cities in China and foreign countries to reveal the formation mechanism of Chinese and foreign urban borough size through the political and economic framework--scale theory.The research idea follows the theoretical research framework,in accordance with the politic of scale that city(metropolitan),borough,resident are the main subject in the scale battle.The scale consists of three interrelated elements(size,level,and relation)and borough size including population and area is used as study perspective to analyze changes of scale,level and relation in struggle.In the empirical part,Japan and South Korea borough size and several cities including Shanghai,Tokyo,Seoul,London,Osaka,Berlin,New York,Paris are adopted to sum up the characteristics,evolution process of borough and to build a more complete formation mechanism of borough size with making a supplementary test and the applicability to the theory frame.The paper suggests that borough size as a scale factor is not only the result of social construction but also scale strategy.Because of the main connotation of the scale factor and the main subject definition are different between China and foreign countries,which leads to the diverse borough size.Chinese boroughs are much larger in comparison with those in other countries.Chinese borough shows economic development oriented uneven circle development.On the other hand,foreign borough presents to be balance with economic development oriented and service oriented.In the end,this paper infers the trend of Chinese borough size and suggests transition of borough size and adjustment of scale relationship should be synchronous.