Spatial Characteristics and Migration Mechanism of Population Suburbanization in Chinese Big City

Abstract

Urban spatial expansion and population suburbanization are very common after urban growth to a certain stage, and also an important research topic of human geographer. Chinese cities have experienced unprecedented growth since the lunch of reforms in the late 1990s. Studies have found that the leading cities in China such as Beijing and Shanghai are undergoing the process of suburbanization, while the country as a whole is still at the stage of urbanization. However, it is difficult to judge whether suburbanization has happened by the traditional method. In this paper, the graphic analysis method is introduced to analyze the spatial distribution of population in big cities, and the migration analysis method is introduced to analyze the source of new population. The results show that: with the rapid urbanization and population growth, the urban population distribution area in Chinese big cities is expanding very much; Inner suburbs are the fastest population growth areas, expanding continuously as circles, and the newly increased people mainly are migrants from the central city and intraprovincial urban people; Outer suburbs reflect unbalanced population growth as a leap-frogging, with faster rates at locations of county/district governments and prioritized development districts, and the newly increased people mainly are interprovincial rural people. It is the general spatial model of population growth in the suburbs of big cities in China, which is obviously different from those in western countries.