Abstract
For the past two decades, China’s urbanization has attracted increasing attention from scholars around the world. Numerous insightful studies have attempted to determine the socioeconomic causes of the rapid urban growth in Chinese cities. However, most of these studies regarded each city as a single entity, with few considering inter-city relationships. The present study uses a gravity-based model to measure the spatial interaction among city clusters in the Wuhan urban agglomeration (WUA), which is one of China’s most rapidly urbanizing regions. The effects of spatial interaction on urban growth area were also analyzed. Empirical results indicate that, similar to urban population or employment in secondary and tertiary industries in the WUA from 2000 to 2005, the spatial interaction among city clusters is one of the main drivers of urban growth. In fact, this study finds the effects of spatial interaction as the only socioeconomic factor that affected the spatial expansion from 2005 to 2010. This finding suggests that population migration and information and commodity flows showed greater influence than the socioeconomic drivers of each city did on promoting urbanization in the WUA during this period. We thus argue that spatial interaction among city clusters should be a consideration in future regional planning.
Highlights
Urban clusters have become the basic geographical and organizational units for countries engaging in international competition and cooperation in an increasingly global economy
Our results demonstrate that the employment in the secondary industry (ESI) and the employment in the tertiary industry (ETI) were positively correlated to the urban growth in Wuhan urban agglomeration (WUA) during 2005–2010, which is similar to the findings of Liao et al (2007) and Cao et al (2007) [12,16]
The spatial interaction among the city clusters in the WUA was calculated by a gravity-based model in which two different parameter sets were tested
Summary
Urban clusters have become the basic geographical and organizational units for countries engaging in international competition and cooperation in an increasingly global economy. Some of the urban agglomerations in China have revealed problems in their growth processes, including the “four shortages” (low development degree, low compactness, low input–output efficiency, and low level supply of resources) and the “four surpluses” (excessive administrative intervention, high expectation of development prospect, high negative effects of high density gathering, and high development disparities) [4]. In this context, social scientists and policy makers have attempted to understand the underlying driving forces of urban expansion to build models for estimating land use evolution and designing sustainable land use policies
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
