Does Population Mobility Contribute to Urbanization Convergence? Empirical Evidence from Three Major Urban Agglomerations in China

Feng Wang,Wenna Fan,Xin Ye,Juan Liu,Xiangyan Lin

doi:10.3390/su12020458

Abstract

Population mobility accelerates urbanization convergence and mitigates the negative impact of the spatial agglomeration effect on urbanization convergence, which is the most important conclusion in this paper. Taking 38 cities in China’s three urban agglomerations (the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region) from 2005 to 2016 as research subjects, the study first shows that there is a large gap in the level of urbanization between the three major urban agglomerations, but the gap has been constantly narrowed and presents a trend of absolute convergence and conditional convergence. Furthermore, without adding a population mobility variable, the combination of the diffusion effect of high-urbanization cities and the high growth rate of low-urbanization cities causes the inter-regional urbanization level to be continuously convergent in the Yangtze River Delta region; however, the combination of the agglomeration effect of high-urbanization cities and the high growth rate of low-urbanization cities causes the inter-regional urbanization to be divergent in the Pearl River Delta and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region. Under the influence of population mobility, the “catch-up” effect in low-urbanization regions is greater than the agglomeration effect in high-urbanization regions, which promotes the continuous convergence of inter-regional urbanization.

Highlights

Cities, as the focus of regional economy, politics, culture, and transportation, form an attraction to the surrounding areas due to the numerous employment opportunities, the perfect infrastructure, and the good educational environment
In the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, population mobility improves the urbanization level in economically developed regions and reduces the urbanization rate in less developed areas; while the improvement of urban level will drive the development of surrounding cities in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region and the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration, which shows a significant spatial diffusion effect but the spatial positive correlation is relatively weak
If the diffusion effect is greater than the agglomeration effect, which means that the regions with high urbanization levels produces a positive impact on the regions with low urbanization rates

Summary

Introduction

As the focus of regional economy, politics, culture, and transportation, form an attraction to the surrounding areas due to the numerous employment opportunities, the perfect infrastructure, and the good educational environment. These comparative advantages have prompted the flow of population from rural to urban areas. Urban and rural population mobility has become an important factor in promoting the rapid growth of urbanization rate at the population dimension [1], and the development of urbanization has contributed to the movement and migration of population in the region [2]. The increasing income gap between urban and rural areas, the uneven distribution of population and the unbalanced urban growth have become the most obvious characteristics of China’s urbanization development. The spatial migration and emigration of population is an important factor affecting the difference of urbanization level, promoting the transformation of land urbanization to population urbanization and solving the uneven distribution of population has become a crucial part of the construction of new-type urbanization [6]

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion