Abstract
Municipal infrastructure is a fundamental facility for the normal operation and development of an urban city and is of significance for the stable progress of sustainable urbanization around the world, especially in developing countries. Based on the municipal infrastructure data of the prefecture-level cities in China, municipal infrastructure development is assessed comprehensively using a FA (factor analysis) model, and then the stochastic model STIRPAT (stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence and technology) is examined to investigate key factors that influence municipal infrastructure of cities in various stages of urbanization and economy. This study indicates that the municipal infrastructure development in urban China demonstrates typical characteristics of regional differentiation, in line with the economic development pattern. Municipal infrastructure development in cities is primarily influenced by income, industrialization and investment. For China and similar developing countries under transformation, national public investment remains the primary driving force of economy as well as the key influencing factor of municipal infrastructure. Contribution from urbanization and the relative consumption level, and the tertiary industry is still scanty, which is a crux issue for many developing countries under transformation. With economic growth and the transformation requirements, the influence of the conventional factors such as public investment and industrialization on municipal infrastructure development would be expected to decline, meanwhile, other factors like the consumption and tertiary industry driven model and the innovation society can become key contributors to municipal infrastructure sustainability.
Highlights
Based on five major urban infrastructure systems and ten municipal infrastructure development indexes, factor analysis is performed for the municipal infrastructure sustainable development of the prefecture-level cities in China in 2010
When KMO is more close to 1, the correlation between variables is stronger, and the original variables are more suitable for factor analysis
The results indicate that municipal infrastructure in China has the typical characteristics of regional differentiation, in line with its economic development pattern, that is primarily influenced by income, industrialization and public investment
Summary
Municipal infrastructure is a fundamental facility for the operation and development of an urban city and is of significant importance for improving the residence environment, city. Economic growth and its structural change, urban population, technology and consumption can significantly influence the municipal infrastructure construction as shown in the literature [2, 11, 20, 26, 31] It is very meaningful for further improving the municipal infrastructure to judge its determinants for cities at different urbanization and economic stages in China and other similar countries. Based on the comprehensive assessment results from the factor analysis (FA) for municipal infrastructure in the prefecture-level cities (excluding principal capitals) in China in 2010, an optimized Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT) model is employed to quantitatively examine the key driving forces for municipal infrastructure development at various stages of urbanization as firstly proposed by Northam [40] and economic development. The methodology of this study is presented, including the FA model, STIRPAT model and index system; China’s municipal infrastructure sustainable development is assessed and its influencing factors are explored; conclusions are presented, and some policies are proposed and discussed
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