Research On The Optimal City Size From The Perspective Of City Network

The optimal city size problem is a long-standing topic in the study of urban economy.The optimal size is an intuitive reflection of urban operation and development efficiency,and is a measure of whether the state of the city is healthy.The current studies commonly regard the city as the "container" from the perspective of the single city or the city grade.The various attribute factors of the container and their interaction determine the urban efficiency and then determine the optimal city size.In the real picture of the global economy and the regional economy,the urban development view is shifting from the city view based on the level competition to the regional or network view based on the network competition.As the network node,the city development potential,the factor gathering,the operation efficiency and the optimal size are increasingly influenced by other cities and their status in the urban network.Therefore,as the traditional optimal city size theory based on the single city perspective neglects the external influence factors of urban development,it is hard to scientifically explain the optimal size of the city in a city network environment.So,based on the essential concept of the optimal city size from the perspective of monomer city,this article analyzes the influences of the external network factor on the production and the internal attribute factors,and then discusses its influences on the optimal city size.A rectification model of optimal city size theory is preliminarily constructed based on the urban network and applied to the empirical study of China’s cities under the the background of rapid urbanization,the result shows: the urban network has positive effect on the optimal size of city which acts as a node in the network;the current Chinese cities have a prominently statistical characteristics that the status of city in urban network is higher,the optimal city size is larger and the overall condition of Chinese cities’ sizes is overlarge;cities that inside the network are closer to their optimal sizes than cities outside and have a lower urban size deviation index in the whole.Finally,policy suggestions are put forward according to the theoretical and empirical conclusion in this paper in view of the city management and urban development.