Economic Transition, Firm Dynamics, and Restructuring of Manufacturing Spaces in Urban China: Empirical Evidence from Nanjing

Abstract

Industrial space is widely considered a fundamental component of urban structure and has been significantly affected by the transitional process in China since the late 1970s. This study investigates the restructuring trajectories and underlying factors of manufacturing firms in Nanjing to detect intraurban dynamical trajectories and spatial patterns. The result implies that Nanjing has witnessed significant suburbanization of manufacturing with the successive exit of old firms and gradual emerging of specialized areas in the peripheral suburbs. In particular, development zones (DZs) have become major bases of new or relocated firms and consequently changed the spatial pattern from a monocentric one toward a polycentric point-axis pattern. Employing binary logistic regression and spatial lag/error models, this study has found that the triple process of marketization, globalization, and decentralization, coupled with the new-type urbanization, has significant influences on the restructuring of urban spaces in China through the price mechanism, production networks, policy reforms, and environmental changes. In addition, the fieldwork survey and semistructured interviews in the old city center show that although the market has played an increasingly important role in driving old firms to migrate from the city center and attracting new firms to concentrate in those planned areas in the suburbs, preferential policies and advanced facilities constructed by local governments are still the main reason why firms concentrated in various DZs.