Abstract
This paper investigates the linkage between emerging urban spatial development and institutional arrangements in China. Emerging spatial patterns, which are prevalent and sizable so that any impacts will be substantial, include dispersed employment concentration, fragmented land development, over-scaled land development, leapfrogging development, and whack-a-mole development. From the institutional point of view, these patterns are associated with decentralization, fiscal incentives for local government, land regulations, and fragmented planning system. It is concluded that these emerging spatial patterns significantly affect long term city sustainable growth and comprehensive reforms are needed to promote efficient urban spatial forms. It is further concluded that labor division between planning and markets should be reshaped in determining urban spatial growth by shifting planning to focus on zoning that provides sufficient development room in a long term and making markets to decide the timing of land development.
Highlights
Urban form and spatial structure are of interest to economists, urban planners, transportation engineers, environmentalists, and geographers since they are directly and indirectly associated with land and capital allocations and utilizations, urban agglomerative economy, transportation demand, energy usage, environmental impact, and many other urban issues and problems such as traffic congestion [1,2,3]
Land Use and Development in the Pre-Reform Period. Both urban spatial development and the institutional arrangements for land use and development should be examined in a historical context because of resiliency and path-dependency of city shape
Many residential lots are found in the middle of farm fields, creating a very fragmented land use patterns in China rural areas (Figure 2)
Summary
Urban form and spatial structure are of interest to economists, urban planners, transportation engineers, environmentalists, and geographers since they are directly and indirectly associated with land and capital allocations and utilizations, urban agglomerative economy, transportation demand, energy usage, environmental impact, and many other urban issues and problems such as traffic congestion [1,2,3]. This paper will focus on two fundamental questions: 1) during the rapid transition period, what are the emerging urban spatial development patterns that have substantial long term efficiency or cost implications and affect sustainable growth trajectories that reduce a city’s productivity and competitiveness; 2) are there any policies directly or indirectly responsible for the creation and. Systematic and quantitative analyses of urban spatial structure and their association with policy and institutional changes require extensive data at both the micro- and macro-levels for measurement as well as in time series for possible causality examination.
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