Administrative Boundary Adjustment And Urban Sprawl

From the historical experience of urban development in China,administrative boundary adjustment is one of the effective tools for local government to optimize resource allocation,improve space efficiency and optimize the urban space structure.since the reform and opening up,the adjustment mode of administrative division at the county level can be manifested as the whole county changed the city,mainly includes setting up cities by withdrawing counties(increasing the number of small cities)and setting up districts by withdrawing counties(expanding the scale of existing cities).Urban sprawl is a by-product of urbanization,which is mainly manifested by the fact that the growth rate of population density is far behind the expansion rate of urban construction land in the same period.the social activities originally concentrated in the urban center transferred to the urban fringe areas,and the urban population density decreased.The whole city presented a spatial pattern of dispersion,low density and dependence on public transportation.Therefore,whether the adjustment of administrative division led by the government will cause urban sprawl remains to be tested empirically.Based on the panel data of cities,This paper uses city-county merger taking place between2000 and 2004 to answer this question,the results show that city-county merger has not resulted in urban sprawl,but has significantly curbed the trend of urban sprawl with the method of difference in difference.This paper also examines the dynamic effect of the implementation of the policy,the regression results show that the restraint effect of the policy reform on urban sprawl is not significant in the long run,indicating that this policy effect is only a “short-lived”and is not sustainable.a series of robustness tests verify the reliability of this conclusion.This paper further discusses the mechanism analysis of the policy to curb urban sprawl,mainly from two aspects of urban space efficiency and public service.The study concludedthat the implementation of the withdrawal policy has improved the land use efficiency and enterprise total factor productivity,reduced the friction between administrative levels at all levels,and helped to improve inter-regional market integration and resource allocation issues,the economic potential of the regions thus increases the efficiency of urban space.At the same time,cities that implement the policy of city-county merger will increase investment in infrastructure in the short term,which will increase the level of urban public services,thus reflecting the effect of population agglomeration.The policy recommendations of this paper are as follows:(1)Administrative division adjustment is a feasible way to improve spatial efficiency.It can eliminate administrative obstacles,improve administrative efficiency and improve the efficiency of resource allocation.(2)While promoting the adjustment of administrative divisions in the short term,it is still necessary to focus on improving the city's technological innovation ability and realizing innovation-driven development.(3)The adjustment of administrative divisions can be used to promote the adjustment of public service layout and investment,so as to realize the equalization of public services in different Spaces.In particular,it is necessary to change the distribution of urban population and optimize the urban spatial structure by adjusting the spatial layout of high-quality educational resources.