Abstract
This paper investigates how urban sprawl and the quality of economic growth interact and further studies the spatial-temporal decoupling characteristics of both. To achieve this, a framework was developed to better explain both the different dimensional effects urban sprawl exerts on the quality of economic growth and their reverse feedback relation. A sample of 285 Chinese cities (2003 to 2016) were analyzed, employing both a decoupling model and spatial correlation analysis. The findings indicated that urban sprawl and the quality of economic growth are related via scale, structure, technological efficiency, and technological progress effects. In practice, with increasing quality of economic growth, the urban sprawl index decreases at the national level. At prefecture-city level, the types of decoupling between urban sprawl and the quality of economic growth showed clear periodical and unbalanced characteristics. Furthermore, decoupling showed a significant agglomeration effect in Chinese cities, which is mainly mediated by the types High-High and Low-Low. This study provides a significant contribution to the relevant acknowledge system by providing a comprehensive theoretical framework toward an understanding of how urban expansion interacts with the quality of economic growth. Furthermore, their decoupling types and spatial differences that are critical for the urban sustainable development have been identified, thus providing several important insights for both academics and urban policy makers.
Highlights
Since the 1990s, China has gradually upgraded its socialist market economy, which boosted advancement of urbanization and industrialization
Since urban land is the carrier of economic growth, the Chinese government increasingly placed greater importance on urban land expansion and its related attributes that contribute to regional economic development [2,3]
Of the total of 285 cities, 188 cities experienced a growth of per capita urban land (PCUL) in 2003
Summary
Since the 1990s, China has gradually upgraded its socialist market economy, which boosted advancement of urbanization and industrialization. Such a “sprawl for growth” pattern has resulted in housing vacancy, redundant industry facilities, and new urban districts that suffer from inefficient utilization This raises questions whether the ability and potential of urban sprawl can meet the necessary future improvement of China’s quality of economic growth: a process of production efficiency change that values economic, social, and environmental costs, which enables a higher desirable output level and can positively contribute to regional development. The study is based on data of 285 Chinese cities, and the urban sprawl index and total factor productivity were calculated for the period of 2003–2016 Based on these calculations, a decoupling index was developed to investigate and study the decoupled relationship between urban sprawl and the quality of economic growth.
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