Abstract
Urban competitiveness aids local development by encouraging the exploitation of opportunities for economic development and by enhancing overall performance. Previous studies have evaluated urban competitiveness primarily from an economic perspective and few studies have considered locational conditions as factors that might influence local industrialization and urbanization. In response to the publishing of a national plan for the development of major function-oriented zones (MFOZs) in 2010, the present essay employs MFOZs as constraints to enable a balanced and comprehensive study of urban competitiveness that includes four dimensions of competitiveness: Economic, social-cultural, environmental, and locational (accessibility and hypsography). A four-level hierarchical indicator system and an entropy weighting method were used to assess the urban competitiveness of 31 Chinese provincial capitals based on a spatial analysis of data acquired in 2010 using Geographic Information System technology. The results reveal the overall ranking of provincial capitals in terms of urban competitiveness and their performances with respect to the four dimensions of competitiveness. Unlike previous studies, this analysis was performed by overlaying the strategy of the national MFOZ with the urban competitiveness rankings. The development orientation of each provincial city is discussed according to its characteristics of urban competitiveness under the conditions of a MFOZ.
Highlights
China is a hierarchically administered country in which the top administrative level is the central government, and the lower administrative levels consist of provincial, city, county, and town/township governments [1]
The purpose of this paper is to provide a new evaluation and analysis of the urban competitiveness of provincial capitals from the perspective of sustainable development and spatial analysis, viewed as an aspect of urban performance [28,29]
Urban competitiveness and its four dimensions were calculated for the provincial capitals for 2010 by applying the integrated assessment method, described in Section 3.3, to the data processed as described in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 (Figures 7 and 8, Table 3)
Summary
China is a hierarchically administered country in which the top administrative level is the central government (the State Council), and the lower administrative levels consist of provincial, city, county, and town/township governments [1]. As fiscal and economic administration has gradually become more decentralized during the Reform and Opening period, urban governments have played an increasingly prominent role in local development and have enjoyed some autonomy in resource allocation, urban planning, and economic policy [2]. The study of cities and of urban competitiveness has become increasingly important, as cities must compete for foreign investment, national projects, strategic preferential policies, etc., to enhance their development prospects. Urban competitiveness is the ability to attract factors, utilize environment, develop industry, produce products, provide service, capture the market, and create the largest fortunes in a fast, effective manner and supply welfare to citizens in the process of competition, cooperation and development in comparison with other cities [4]. Various analytical approaches to urban competitiveness, such as the urban competitiveness measurement model [5,6,7]—which includes an indicator system [8,9] and a weighting method [10]—have been used to evaluate urban competitiveness indices [11,12] and urban competitiveness rankings [13]
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