Research On The Relationship Between Urban Scale Distribution And Economic Development Level

The issue of uncoordinated and insufficient regional economic development in China remains prominent.Improving regional economic performance,narrowing regional economic disparities,and achieving coordinated regional economic development are important issues that China needs to address at present.Study the distribution of provincial city size from the perspective of urban system to measure the relative scale balance of all cities within the province.The balanced or unbalanced distribution patterns of cities within different provinces can provide new explanatory ideas for the overall performance of the provincial economy and the changes in internal disparities within the province,and provide policy references for the government to achieve regional coordinated development.Firstly,taking the distribution of urban scale and regional economic growth as the research object,based on the summary of previous research,the two core concepts of this article are defined: economic development level(including performance and gap),and the connotation of urban scale distribution.Secondly,using the historical induction method,the evolution of urban size distribution in China during the two historical stages from the establishment of the People’s Republic of China to the pre reform and opening up period and from the reform and opening up period to the present day is analyzed.It is concluded that the uniformity of urban size distribution in China is greatly influenced by political factors and has an impact on economic growth performance;Using the Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition method to measure regional economic disparities in the past decade,it was found that the main contributing factors to the widening of regional disparities in China in the past decade came from within the region,and uneven distribution of urban size would lead to the widening of regional disparities.Finally,through the data of 281 prefecture level cities in China from 2011 to 2020,the impact of city size distribution on economic development performance and gap is tested respectively.The results show that the relative size(city concentration ratio)of the top cities in the province has a significant positive effect on the economic performance of the province,but the uneven distribution of cities in the province(too large Huffindale index)will lead to factor price distortion and deterioration of the division of functions between cities,Blocking the diffusion effect of central cities on non central cities,causing damage to the overall economic performance of the province,widening the economic gap within the province,and hindering the coordinated development of regional economy;On the contrary,the top few cities within the province are relatively balanced in size,forming a "competitive" distribution pattern within the province,which is conducive to the division of functions among various cities within the province,improving the overall performance of the provincial economy,narrowing the economic gap within the province,and achieving coordinated regional economic development.