| Urban amenities is one of the research hotspots in modern western urban geography and economics.It has attracted the attention of the academia and policy makers in recent years.With the development of western society,the connotation of urban amenities has undergone an uninterrupted evolution.At the early days(1950s)it emphasized the impact of natural environment and living conditions on population migration,and gradually replaced by the attraction of the creative environment to innovative industries,talents and capital,and the promotion of urban development.In recent years,human resources have become the primary resource to play a leading role in China’s economic transformation and development;at the same time,China’s demographic dividend has gradually disappeared,and most cities engendered urgent needs for knowledge-based and skilled labor groups.Against this background,constructing an urban amenities assessment system in Chinese context and clarifying the endogenous interactions between urban amenities,talent gathering,and economic development will provide decision-making basis for regional policies on talent attraction.Firstly,sorting out the related theories of urban amenities,and building an urban amenities system suitable for China.The core of theory is attracting talents and promoting urban development by creating a favorable environment for talents,its essence is the concept of talent-oriented urban development: The population flow between cities is affected by economic and job opportunities;In addition,it is also significantly affected by urban amenities;Urban amenities has a rich connotation and corresponds to the needs of human beings with higher levels of socialization,and is more inclined to satisfy the preferences of people with certain knowledge and skills who have more employment opportunities.Creating urban amenities based on decision preferences of talent mobility space,in such way we can promot urban competitiveness by attracting talent inflows to promote urban economic development.Based on the above theoretical framework of urban amenities,taking prefecture-level cities as research object to explore the spatial pattern of urban amenities and talent agglomeration in China.Using factor analysis to identify representative socio-economic conditions that reflect the characteristics of urban amenities during the development of the city.On a macro scale,the dimensions of 253prefecture-level cities in China are evaluated for dimensionality reduction.The agglomeration level of talents in each city was visualized using GIS technology.The study found that urban amenties has multiple connotations,mainly reflected in functions such as consumption,culture,work,and health;urban amenities has obvious regional differences and urban gradient differences,reflecting the changes in human needs at different stages of urban development and their Subjective initiative to transform the city;there is a significant spatial autocorrelation in the level of urban talent agglomeration,and highly educated talents are more inclined to economically developed regions and regional central cities when making mobility decisions.Based on the analysis of the spatial pattern,the endogenous interactions between the creative environment,talent agglomeration and economic development are examined.Taking 36 provincial capitals as the research object,the P-VAR model was used to estimate panel amenities of the creative environment,talent agglomeration and economic development,and observing the impulse response diagram so as to analysis the contribution rate of each variable in dynamic interactive effect.The study found that economic growth and the development of the consumer service industry have a coupling and promoting effect.There is an inertial growth mechanism in the development of urban service industry,talent agglomeration and economic vitality.The construction of urban innovative environment and the allocation of talent resources are a gradual process and should be given priority consideration.To strengthen the endogenous driving force of urban economic development,feasible measures should be formulated to optimize the environment for talent pooling and the allocation of human resources;cities with a relatively high output value of tertiary industry can cause positive and long-term impulse responses to the city’s talent agglomeration.Talent resources are important influencing factors of the transformation and development of the industrial structure,cities in transition should pay attention to the improvement of the quality of human capital,thereby driving the optimization of urban resource allocation and the adjustment of the industrial structure.Based on the results of urban amenities evaluation,taking 253 prefecture-level cities as research objects,the threshold model was constructed with wages and housing prices as thresholds.The effect of urban amenities on the concentration of talents in different types of cities was examined,and the logistic regression model was used to examine the individual amenities preferences of the floating population.The study found that there is a non-linear relationship between the level of urban amenities and the concentration of talents.In category I and II cities where the amenities system is weak,the size of the city is the main factor affecting the influx of talents.With the increase of urban wages and housing prices,the creative environment(in type II and III cities)and the level of public service supply(in type III cities)have a significant positive impact on talent agglomeration;in type IV cities possessing more developed amenities,on the one hand,wage levels significantly increase the inflow of talent,high-level human capital has a polarizing effect,on the other hand,the talent gathering effect of the urban amenities system is no longer obvious,which is significantly negatively related to the air quality level;migrants with higher education or longer working hours per week have greater preference for creative environment amenities,this preference grows with age in youth and rapidly declines after reaching middle age.The article concludes with a theoretical regression on the evolution of domestic talent agglomeration,and its significance varies with the individual characteristics of the floating population and the city’s own attributes.For economically developed cities,good urban creative environments can enhance the vitality of the city’s economy,and at the same time attract young and middle-aged highly educated talents,which is an important manifestation of the soft power of urban development.It was also briefly suggested that cities of different sizes should reasonably create amenities environment to achieve a balance between livability,talent introduction and development in the city,with a view to providing theoretical guidance for China to formulate regional and urban development strategies based on empirical analysis of western urban amenities theory. |
