Structure and restructuring of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei megalopolis in China

Abstract

Scott proposes to use the term global city-regions to designate the phenomena that bear some resemblance to the "world cities" firstly identified by Hall and Friedmann and Wolff, and to the "global cities" of Sassen but whose essential social logic and contextual characteristics have evolved considerably since these pioneering studies were published. In simple geographical terms, a global city-region can be refered to comprise any major metropolitan area or any contiguous set of metropolitan areas together with a surrounding hinterland of variable extent—itself a locus of scattered urban settlements—whose internal economic and political affairs are bound up in intricate ways in intensifying and far-flung extra-national relationships. Scott refers to these extra-national relationships as a symptom of "globalization". As economic motors and political actors, the global city regions have been regarded as crucial parts of development strategies in China. In the "Eleventh Five-year Plan" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission of P. R. China, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Province (Jing-Jin-Ji) region, one of the typical megalopolises or global city regions in the East Coastal China is paid more attention. This paper first analyzes the regional structure of the Jing-Jin-Ji region based on data of the fifth national population census of China. And then through the changes of the population growth, the dynamic process and mechanisms of the regional restructuring in the Jing-Jin-Ji is explored and discussed.