Growth and development in prefecture-level cities in China

Nowhere has the scale and scope of urbanization been larger than in China over the last few decades. We analyze Chinese city development between the years 1996 and 2014 using data for the urbanized components of prefecture-level cities. We show that, despite much variability and fast economic and de...

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Autores principales: Zünd, Daniel, Bettencourt, Luís M. A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6719855/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31479455
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221017
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author Zünd, Daniel
Bettencourt, Luís M. A.
author_facet Zünd, Daniel
Bettencourt, Luís M. A.
author_sort Zünd, Daniel
collection PubMed
description Nowhere has the scale and scope of urbanization been larger than in China over the last few decades. We analyze Chinese city development between the years 1996 and 2014 using data for the urbanized components of prefecture-level cities. We show that, despite much variability and fast economic and demographic change, China is undergoing transformations similar to the historical trajectory of other urban systems. We also show that the distinguishing signs of urban economies—superlinear scaling of agglomeration effects in economic productivity and economies of scale in land use—also characterize Chinese cities. We then analyze the structure of economic change in Chinese cities using a variety of metrics, characterizing employment, firms and households. Population size estimates remain a major challenge for Chinese cities, as official numbers are often reported based on the Hukou registration system. We use the information in the residuals to scaling relations for economic quantities to predict actual resident population and show that these estimates agree well with data for a subset of cities for which counts of total resident population exist. We conclude with a list of issues that must be better understood and measured to make sense of present urban development trajectories in China.
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spelling pubmed-67198552019-09-16 Growth and development in prefecture-level cities in China Zünd, Daniel Bettencourt, Luís M. A. PLoS One Research Article Nowhere has the scale and scope of urbanization been larger than in China over the last few decades. We analyze Chinese city development between the years 1996 and 2014 using data for the urbanized components of prefecture-level cities. We show that, despite much variability and fast economic and demographic change, China is undergoing transformations similar to the historical trajectory of other urban systems. We also show that the distinguishing signs of urban economies—superlinear scaling of agglomeration effects in economic productivity and economies of scale in land use—also characterize Chinese cities. We then analyze the structure of economic change in Chinese cities using a variety of metrics, characterizing employment, firms and households. Population size estimates remain a major challenge for Chinese cities, as official numbers are often reported based on the Hukou registration system. We use the information in the residuals to scaling relations for economic quantities to predict actual resident population and show that these estimates agree well with data for a subset of cities for which counts of total resident population exist. We conclude with a list of issues that must be better understood and measured to make sense of present urban development trajectories in China. Public Library of Science 2019-09-03 /pmc/articles/PMC6719855/ /pubmed/31479455 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221017 Text en © 2019 Zünd, Bettencourt http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Zünd, Daniel
Bettencourt, Luís M. A.
Growth and development in prefecture-level cities in China
title Growth and development in prefecture-level cities in China
title_full Growth and development in prefecture-level cities in China
title_fullStr Growth and development in prefecture-level cities in China
title_full_unstemmed Growth and development in prefecture-level cities in China
title_short Growth and development in prefecture-level cities in China
title_sort growth and development in prefecture-level cities in china
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6719855/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31479455
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221017
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