Abstract
Characteristic towns have emerged along with China’s economic and social development. As a new model of small-town development, they have played an essential role in promoting industrial transformation and upgrade, improving the living environment, and promoting regional innovation and development. Accurate identification of the expansion characteristics of National Characteristic Towns (NCTs) is vital for optimizing the spatial layout of characteristic towns and adjusting the policies of characteristic towns. This study used a dataset on nighttime light to identify expanding NCTs and measure their expansion from 2000 to 2020. In total, 233 expanding NCTs were identified, accounting for 58.25% of the NCTs in China. The areas with the most significant intensity of expansion are primarily located in the East, South, and North economic regions. The critical period of NCTs expansion primarily occurred in the periods 2008–2011 and 2011–2014. Our results show that NCTs are highly consistent with the spatial distribution of urban agglomerations, and the development of NCTs is inherently related to the development of urban agglomerations in the region. The implementation of NCT policies has significantly promoted the development of NCTs in the Central and Western economic regions, which face challenging development issues and differ from those in the Eastern region. The method proposed in this study can effectively identify the ‘hot spots’ of expanding NCTs and the critical periods of their expansion.
Highlights
Urbanization is a global socio-economic and geographical phenomenon, especially forAsia, Africa, and Latin America, characterized by lagging development and predominantly rural population [1,2]
To comprehensively understand expanding characteristic towns, we proposed to expand the Characteristic Towns Identification Index (ECII), which is calculated from year to year based on Total Digital Numbers (TDN) from 2000 to 2020
More than half of the National Characteristic Towns (NCTs) have expanded in China
Summary
Urbanization is a global socio-economic and geographical phenomenon, especially forAsia, Africa, and Latin America, characterized by lagging development and predominantly rural population [1,2]. As a new model of small-town development, characteristic towns emerge with China’s economic and social development and play a significant role in promoting industrial transformation and upgrading, improving the living environment, and promoting regional innovation and development. It has a critical multi-dimensional agglomeration of population, industry, and culture. After learning from the experience of Zhejiang province and considering the uneven development of different regions, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Finance issued a joint notice on the development of National Characteristic Towns (NCTs). There were 403 NCTs recognized by the Ministry of Housing and
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