New-type Urbanization Research Articles

How Does the New-Type Urbanization Policy Affect Urban Low-Carbon Development?

The profound transformations brought about by the rapid advancement of urbanization have had a significant impact on low-carbon cities. In this study, we utilize the "New-type Urbanization Policy" (NTUP) as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the influence of NTUP on carbon emissions using the difference-in-differences (DID). Our findings indicate that NTUP effectively reduces carbon emissions and enhances emission efficiency, with consistent results even after conducting rigorous tests and addressing endogeneity concerns. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that resource-based cities, eastern cities and small- and medium-sized cities benefit more from NTUP in terms of reducing carbon emissions and improving efficiency. The mediating effect demonstrates that NTUP's impact on carbon emissions primarily operates through three mechanisms: promoting industrial structure upgrading, reducing energy use and promoting green technology innovation. This research offers valuable insights for achieving urban low-carbon sustainable development through new-type urbanization initiatives.

Passenger spatiotemporal distribution prediction in airport terminals based on physics-guided spatio-temporal graph convolutional network and its effect on indoor environment prediction

The airport as an important transportation hub plays a leading role in promoting sustainable cities and new-type urbanization. To boost safe, environmental-friendly and technologically advanced airports, the passenger travel behavior as a core that decides the resource allocation, system tuning and capacity dispatching, must be grasped. Previous research in passenger distribution prediction focused on physics-based methods or only mining temporal dynamics. In this work, a refined passenger distribution prediction was modeled based on a learning-based method embedding physical prior knowledge, and then its effects on indoor environment prediction were analyzed. Among them, based on insect intelligent building architecture, a virtual spatial graph was defined in Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport Terminal 2, then a Wi-Fi positioning system was constructed; Next, a physics-guided spatio-temporal graph convolutional network, considering both the spatial dependencies and the passenger arrival pattern extracted from cost-free flight schedules, was developed for domestic and international passenger distribution predictions with R2 over 0.87 and 0.76 respectively; Lastly, the contributions of predicted occupant densities to the indoor environment prediction were evaluated with results showing that the average R2 for indoor temperature, relative humidity and CO2 concentration prediction was enhanced by 0.4 %∼91.5 %, 0.2 %∼29.7 % and 0.4 %∼45.4 % respectively as the prediction horizon broadening.

Assessment of Urban Sustainability and Coupling Coordinated Development: An Empirical Study in Anhui Province, China

The conflict between economic development and environmental degradation has significantly impeded urban development. Currently, the Chinese government is actively promoting the comprehensive transformation of new-type urbanization. This study measured the quality of urbanization and its degree of coupling coordination in 16 cities in Anhui Province from 2010 to 2020, utilizing 32 indicators across six dimensions: economic development (ED), infrastructure (INF), population development (PD), social development (SD), environmental protection (EP) and urban–rural integration (URI). Additionally, a novel method of sequential relationship analysis, oriented towards “interaction–change” was introduced to calculate indicator weights, which take the interactive degree among various indices and dependencies between neighboring cities into account. The results indicate that urban development in Anhui Province is imbalanced due to a low degree of resource matching. However, there is a positive trend in the relationship between urbanization quality and economic development. Furthermore, although the coupling coordination degree of urbanization quality in most cities fluctuates at different scales, it is still necessary to narrow and optimize the gap between subsystems. For one thing, the above achievements may provide reference for breaking through the traditional static weighting method from the theoretical level. For another, it can also provide decision-makers with valuable insights to establish an intercity complementary management system, so as to achieve sustainable development across the entire region.

Spatio-temporal characteristics and decoupling relationship of new-type urbanization and carbon emissions at the county Level: A case study of Zhejiang Province, China

Coordinating the relationship between new-type urbanization (NTU) and carbon emission (CE) reduction has emerged as a primary strategic objective in China. However, previous studies on this subject have predominantly focused on the unidirectional impact of NTU on CE, neglecting their spatio-temporal characteristics and the potential for a decoupling relationship. Focusing on the county-level areas in Zhejiang Province, this study establishes an evaluation system for measuring NTU and investigates the spatio-temporal characteristics and evolving decoupling relationship of NTU and CE from 2007 to 2021, along with the influencing factors. The results are shown as follows: (1) CE levels in Zhejiang's counties are predominantly higher in the northeast and lower in the southwest, with minimal temporal fluctuations. Concurrently, the collective NTU in these counties has witnessed a rapid increase, with a growing disparity in NTU levels and a concentration of higher NTU primarily in the northern regions. (2) From 2007 to 2021, the decoupling relationship between NTU and CE in Zhejiang's counties evolved from suboptimal to significantly improved, ultimately achieving continuous optimization, with the proportion of counties in the “strong decoupling II” category increasing to 60.7% in the final phase. (3) The most significant influencing factors for decoupling evolved from economic NTU predominance in 2007 to societal NTU in 2012, and further progressed to population NTU in 2022. (4) Informed by the types of decoupling and evolutionary factors, we propose strategies and implications aimed at fostering the high-quality, synergistic development of NTU and CE. These findings provide theoretical and empirical underpinnings for the high-quality attainment of NTU and the dual carbon objectives in China.

New-type urbanisation and regional spatial structures—A case study

This paper mainly used a qualitative approach, including the case studies and comparative study, to investigate the evolutions of the regional spatial structures that will appear in the context of new-type urbanisation practices in China (National New-type Urbanisation Plan, NNUP), based on the investigation of two well-known municipalities, Chongqing and Shenzhen. The term ‘regional spatial structures’, in this paper, refer to the higher-level urban systematic spatial structures, in other words, the structures of city system. A city system generally has various forms of sub-settlements appeared within it. In this essay, the regional spatial structure of the city system was studied in details in which emphasis is put upon the planning of the city system, (which includes the formation of developmental units, like the districts, city clusters and developmental corridors), the formation of management methods and the inter-associations between the different units of settlements. Moreover, the regional spatial structures also constitute of the local income and market structures. With the above concepts, the paper demonstrates the current situations of NNUP in Chongqing and Shenzhen in terms of the management as well as the spatial developmental framework, and their respective effects on the regional spatial structures in the locality, and in turn draw a final conclusion, through making discussions towards the similarities and differences in their NNUP practices, that both cities are emphasising on the urbanisation practices towards the counties, while still having differences in terms of the extent to which the harmonised city system has been formed. Therefore, in the general NNUP context, efforts should continue to be made for the revitalisations of potential settlements, especially those with the strategic locations proximate to the municipal- or urban cluster-level central areas.

Simulation analysis of Chinese new-type urbanization policy in mineral resource abundant regions based on the CGE model

The prominent contradictions of economy, resources and environment have formed a great obstacle to the new-type urbanization (NU) in mineral resource abundant regions (MRARs). However, the current NU policy system in MRARs is not able to meet the requirement of NU in different types of MRARs. Thus, to exactly study the impacts of different policies on different types of MRARs and the differences in the impacts and effectively improve the policy system, this article builds a NU computable general equilibrium model for MRARs based on general equilibrium theory. Five modules are constructed for the economic system operation in MRARs, four policy variables, such as environmental protection tax (EPT), resource tax (RT), government transfer payment (GTP) to residents, and government R&D investment, are introduced, and eighteen scenarios are set up to explore policy impact on NU in different types of MRARs. The simulation results indicate that: (1) The impact of EPT on conserving energy and reducing emission is more obvious in MRARs with poor social and economic foundations. (2) The increase of RT rate provides a comparative advantage for resource-dependent industries in resource-exporting regions. (3) The effect of GTP on the realization of common prosperity is influenced by regional social and economic foundation differences. (4) The impact of government R&D investment on industrial structure adjustment and optimization is not obvious in the short term. Finally, targeted policy recommendations are proposed to promote NU in MRARs.

New-type urbanization and ecological well-being performance: A coupling coordination analysis in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River urban agglomerations, China

Urbanization within the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAMRYR) faces increasing tension between growth, human welfare, and ecological preservation. This study investigates the interplay between new-type urbanization (NTU) and ecological well-being performance (EWP) as potential mitigation approaches. Using the entropy weight topsis and super-efficiency SBM models, we quantify NTU and EWP within the UAMRYR. Additionally, the coupling coordination degree model (CCDM) elucidates the intricate dynamics between these systems. Our findings indicate that NTU is underdeveloped, particularly economically and socially. The EWP underwent volatile periods before rapid expansion. The majority of CCD exhibited low coordination, oscillating between 0.4 and 0.5. Spatial analysis showed marked polarization within the UAMRYR and a “high-low-moderate” core-periphery distribution. Guided by these insights, we suggest policies to enhance CCD between NTU and EWP. These strategies aim to align sustainable urban growth with economic development, balanced ecological preservation, and human welfare enhancement.

A novel framework to evaluate urban-rural coordinated development: A case study in Shanxi Province, China

The coexistences of urban diseases and rural decline threaten the achievements of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). China, experiencing rapid urbanization recently, is facing the prominent issues of unbalanced and inadequate development. Accordingly, the Chinese government has launched new-type urbanization (NU) and rural vitalization (RV) strategies. After illustrating the coupling mechanism of NU and RV strategies, a novel framework that combines a multidimensional development index (MDI) and the modified coupling degree model (MCDM) is proposed to delineate urban-rural coordinated development. Taking Shanxi Province as an example, multi-source data are incorporated into NU and RV evaluation subsystems. MDI is introduced to evaluate the comprehensive performance of NU and RV, which overcomes the restriction of ordinary linear weighting method that assumes the independence of elements. MCDM is developed to estimate coordinated relationships of urban and rural development. Results show that only two cities are in the extreme coupling stage according to MCDM, which demonstrates it can effectively differentiate the degree of urban-rural integration, whereas the original model potentially overestimates the coupling degree. The effectiveness of the framework is validated in our empirical analysis, which can be applied to evaluate the performance and coordination among multiple subsystems in other fields.

Research on the Coupling Co-ordination between Quality of County-Level New Urbanization and Ecosystem Service Value in Shaanxi Province

Rapid urbanization has significantly impacted the structure of ecosystem services, accelerating the pressure on natural resources and ecological space. The clarification of the interdependent relationship between new-type urbanization (NTU) and ecosystem services (ESs) has contributed to ecological conservation and high-quality co-ordinated development, in contrast to traditional urbanization. This study focuses on the counties in Shaanxi Province as the research subjects, develops a new urbanization evaluation model for county-level areas, and utilizes Section data at the county level in Shaanxi Province for the years 2000, 2010, and 2020. (To analyze land cover change, we selected four data periods: 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020, to capture significant spatial trends.) This study employed the comparative analysis method and the Coupled Co-ordination Model (CCDM) to assess the correlation between traditional urbanization and the value of ecosystem services, as well as between new urbanization and the value of ecosystem services. Additionally, the study utilizes the ArcGIS platform to analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of the two types of urbanization evolution and the spatiotemporal relationship between urbanization and ecosystem co-ordination. The study findings suggest the following: (1) a “low-level coordination” coupling relationship exists between traditional and new urbanization in county-level areas of Shaanxi Province and the value of ecosystem services. (2) The coupling co-ordination of traditional and new urbanization with the value of ecosystem services shows a spread of low-value areas in space, leading to a pattern of low disorder assimilation and significant spatial aggregation. (3) From 2000 to 2020, traditional and new urbanization in various counties of Shaanxi Province consistently exhibited a steady increase, with spatial patterns of “Guanzhong region > Northern Shaanxi region > Southern Shaanxi region”. Both types of urbanization have displayed a “low-level coupling” with ecosystem services. (4) During the same period, the new urbanization index in different counties of Shaanxi Province showed a steady increase, demonstrating an advantage of Guanzhong. Its impact on the ecosystem was significantly weaker than that of traditional urbanization. (5) The development of new urbanization can be more effectively co-ordinated with ecosystem services compared to traditional urbanization. However, currently, its co-ordination with the ecosystem service system is relatively poor. The study’s results suggest that enhancing new urbanization from multiple dimensions is beneficial for promoting the integrated coherence between urbanization development and ecosystem service systems.

How does decarbonization of the central heating industry affect employment? A spatiotemporal analysis from the perspective of urbanization

This study evaluates the spatiotemporal heterogeneous effects of decarbonizing the central heating industry on employment from the perspective of new-type urbanization based on an innovative theoretical framework. Our average estimated CO2 emission intensity of the central heating industry in China at the city-level decreased from 54.51 tCO2/100 m2 in 2012 to 47.24 tCO2/100 m2 in 2019. Decarbonization of the central heating industry may promote total employment in 72 % of the Chinese cities with the median effect is 0.005 % for each 1 % reduction of the heating carbon intensity. However, the promotion effect may be inhibited by ecological and environmental urbanization, while strengthening through population and land, economic, social, and urban–rural integration dimensions of urbanization. Our findings can provide policy implications for carbon emission control and new-type urbanization planning in cities to achieve stable employment.

Mechanism and empirical evidence on new-type urbanization to narrow the urban-rural income gap: Evidence from China's provincial data.

The main component of China's income gap is the urban-rural income gap, which is largely affected by urbanization. It is worth studying how new-type urbanization affects the income gap between urban and rural areas. Research mostly focuses on the urbanization rate as the core explanatory variable to explain the impact using one or two factors. This paper analyzes the mechanism of the effect using a comprehensive number of factors, with the quality of new-type urbanization development as the core explanatory variable. In terms of theoretical research, we believe that new-type urbanization affects the urban-rural income gap by promoting the transfer of labor, changing industrial structure, and policy tendency. Using both static and dynamic empirical analyses, we test the impact of new-type urbanization on the urban-rural income gap based on China's provincial data. We find that new-type urbanization is conducive to narrowing the income gap between urban and rural areas. The transfer of labor significantly reduces the urban-rural income gap. However, the upgrading of industrial structure will enlarge the gap. The impact of China's policy orientation is negligible. Policy should focus on promoting urbanization and improving the marginal rate of return of agriculture, improve the level of human capital, reverse the mismatch between employment structure and industrial structure, increase support for rural areas, and make substantial progress in promoting common prosperity.

The Impact of New-Type Urbanization Policy on Urban Green Total Factor Productivity: New Evidence from China

The Impact of New-Type Urbanization Policy on Urban Green Total Factor Productivity: New Evidence from China

Research on the Countermeasures for Coordinated-Promoting New-type Urbanization and Rural Vitalization

Research on the Countermeasures for Coordinated-Promoting New-type Urbanization and Rural Vitalization

Can agricultural low-carbon development benefit from urbanization？-Empirical evidence from China's new-type urbanization pilot policy

Advancing agricultural low-carbon development (ALCD) holds substantial real-world significance for the low-carbon sustainable growth of the global economy. Traditional urbanization, focusing on the “one-way” concentration of elements in cities and pursuing urban expansion's scale and speed, poses a threat to ALCD. In contrast, new-type urbanization (NTU), which emphasizes a “two-way” concentration of elements in both rural and urban areas, provides an approach to address this issue. Nevertheless, no research has investigated the relationship between NTU, particularly the new-type urbanization pilot policy (NTUPP), and ALCD. To fill this void, this research employs panel data from 210 Chinese cities from 2006 to 2019, using a difference-in-differences (DID) model to investigate the impact and mechanisms of NTUPP on ALCD for the first time. The study reveals: (1) NTUPP significantly boosts the level of ALCD, with cities that have implemented NTUPP showing an average enhancement of 19.13% in ALCD levels compared to those without NTUPP. (2) NTUPP chiefly fosters ALCD by improving agricultural technological efficiency rather than advancing technological progress. (3) Relative to smaller cities, northern cities, eastern cities, resource-based cities, major grain-producing areas, cities with substantial government intervention, and cities with lower levels of financial development, NTUPP is more efficacious in enhancing ALCD in larger cities, southern cities, central and western cities, non-resource-based cities, non-major grain-producing areas, cities with minimal government intervention, and cities with advanced financial development. (4) NTUPP advances ALCD in local cities and boosts ALCD in neighboring cities via spatial spillover effects. This research aids the Chinese government in clarifying the implementation effects of the new-type urbanization pilot policy based on its findings, offering theoretical underpinnings and practical evidence for government departments in shaping and assessing the policy, and providing insights and evidence for other nations worldwide to advance sustainable agricultural development via enhanced urbanization efforts.

Spatial Disparity of Sports Infrastructure Development and Urbanization Determinants in China: Evidence from the Sixth National Sports Venues Census

The improvement of well-being of residents is the core of the people-centred urbanization. Inhabitants’ emphasis on healthy lifestyle draws attention to the provision of sports infrastructure. However, the spatial pattern of sport infrastructure development and in particular the driving forces from urbanization across China have not been examined yet in the literature. This paper aims to explore how the national sports infrastructure in mainland China is driven and scaled by urbanization, using data from the sixth National Sports Venues Census and a multi-scale geographically weighted regression approach. The results revealed strong regional inequality in the development of sports infrastructure in the stage of accelerating urbanization in China, with better provision of sports infrastructure in eastern than in western regions. The three dimensions of urbanization (urban population, public financial expenditure and built-up area) significantly explained the spatial disparity between 289 cities at prefecture-city level. There should be a feedback loop between the accumulative developments of urbanization and sports infrastructure. The contributing driving forces and subsequent regional heterogeneity suggest that sports space theory, the inequality amplification model, and hysteresis effect are comparatively suitable for explaining the spatial inequality characteristics of sports infrastructure development in China. A Sport Inequality Alert was conceptualized as a policy instrument for monitoring regional inequality and governing the development of sports infrastructure. It is argued that sports infrastructure development should be integrated into the national strategy for sustainable New-type Urbanization.

An improved approach for measuring the coupling relationship between new type urbanization and low carbon development in China

New Type Urbanization (NTU) and Low Carbon Development (LCD) are the two major issues for Chinese cities to achieve their sustainable development goals. It is crucial to recognize the coupling relationship between NTU and LCD. Existing studies on this coupling mainly focus on measuring LCD performance through carbon emissions, while neglecting the coordination between different dimensions of NTU and LCD. To address these gaps, an enhanced method is proposed in this study to measure the dimensional coupling performance between NTU and LCD. A comprehensive indicator evaluation system is constructed to assess the performance of both NTU and LCD. The Entropy and TOPSIS methods are employed to obtain scores for NTU and LCD performance, while the grey correlation analysis method is applied to determine the degree of coupling coordination. To validate the proposed approach, a case study using data from 35 large cities spanning from 2008 to 2020 has been conducted. The main findings of this study can be summarized as follows: (1) The proposed method consists of three steps: calculating NTU and LCD performance scores, determining the degree of coupling, and estimating the level of coupling coordination. (2) Four major trends in the development of coupling degrees among these 35 large cities have been identified: increase, decrease, “V” type and inverted “V” type. (3) Empirical evidence demonstrates that our proposed model is valid. This study provides valuable insights for addressing imbalances between NTU and LCD issues faced by Chinese government.

Smart city construction and new-type urbanization quality improvement

First, utilising text quantitative analysis techniques, this paper analyses the smart city pilot policy in depth and clarifies its theoretical mechanism that influence the quality of new-type urbanisation. The revised entropy technique is then used to calculate the new-type urbanisation quality of 276 Chinese cities with a prefecture level or higher from 2007 to 2018. The above action mechanism is evaluated using the Difference-in-Difference model, employing the smart city pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment (DID). The results indicate that the implementation of the smart city pilot policy can significantly enhance the quality of new-type urbanisation, and this conclusion is robust under a variety of conditions, including parallel trend testing, tendency score matching, exclusion of other policy interference and placebo testing. The analysis of heterogeneity indicates that the smart city pilot strategy has a greater impact on the qualitative improvement of new-type urbanisation in historic industrial bases, resource-based cities, and large-scale cities. The mechanism test confirmed that the construction of smart cities has improved the quality of new-type urbanisation primarily through the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure brought about by smart industrial policy and scientific and technological innovation fostered by smart government and smart people's livelihood policies.

The Influence of New-Type Urbanization and Environmental Pollution on Public Health: A Spatial Durbin Model Study

The rapid pace of urbanization in recent years, accompanied by the tension between urbanization and environmental pollution as well as public health, has become increasingly prominent, potentially constraining the normal pace of urbanization development, environmental sustainability and public health enhancement. This paper aims to clarify the relationship between new urbanization, environmental pollution and public health from both local and spatial perspectives, using a spatial Durbin model and a mediating effects model based on panel data from 275 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2020 and to test the existence of regional heterogeneity with a sub-sample of three major regions: eastern, central and western China. After incorporating environmental pollution as a variable across the entire scope of China, it was found that the new-type urbanization was related to public health in a ‘positive U-shaped’ form in terms of both local and spatial spillover effects (β2 = 14.5620, β3 = −17.8938, p < 0.05; θ2 = 19.2527, θ3 = −29.0973, p < 0.1) and environmental pollution exerts a negative impact on public health (β1 = 6.3704, θ1 = 2.5731, p < 0.05). A “reverse U-shaped” local effect was observed between new-type urbanization and environmental pollution (β2 = 0.6281, β3 = −0.5315, p < 0.05). Environmental pollution plays a partially mediating role in the impact mechanism of new-type urbanization on public health. There was regional heterogeneity in the relationship between new-type urbanization, environmental pollution and public health. The empirical results for the western regions and the whole of China were generally consistent, but the differences were significant between the eastern and central regions. In the eastern region, new-type urbanization and public health were related in an ‘inverted U-shaped’ form from the perspective of local and spatial spillover effect, and in the central region, there was an ‘inverted U-shaped’ form from the perspective of local effect. There was a threshold effect relationship between new-type urbanization and environmental pollution and between new-type urbanization and public health. At the same time, there was regional heterogeneity in the relationships between the three. Therefore, this paper argues that governments should formulate scientific urban planning and sustainable development policies that take into account the actual situation of each region and aim to promote sustainable urbanization, environmental quality and public health as a whole.

Spatial–Temporal Evolution and Driving Factors of Coupling Coordination between High-Quality Urban Development and Carbon Emissions Intensity in Guangdong Province

Promoting urban green growth necessitates a dual focus on reducing carbon emissions and fostering high-quality development. However, the body of research on the coupling relationship between high-quality urban development and carbon emissions remains remarkably limited. Taking Guangdong province as an example, this study strived to establish a comprehensive evaluation system for high-quality urban development encompassing economic, societal, and ecological dimensions and further conducted an in-depth examination of the spatiotemporal pattern and driving forces of coupling coordination degree between high-quality urban development and carbon emission intensity during 2000–2017. The coupling coordination degree in Guangdong province has shown continuous growth, transitioning from moderate incoordination to moderate coordination. The coupling coordination degree showed the overall spatial distribution characteristics of “high in southeast and low in others”, with Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Dongguan, and Shenzhen as the core. Notably, technological advancement, environmental governance, and economic development emerge as pivotal factors that positively affect carbon emission intensity reduction, environmental quality improvement, and coupling coordination enhancement. This research provides valuable insights for achieving harmonized high-quality development in Guangdong province involving policies of regional differences, industrial competitiveness, and new-type urbanization.

Research on the Spatial Effect and Threshold Characteristics of New-Type Urbanization on Carbon Emissions in China’s Construction Industry

As the strategic task of China’s modernization, the implementation of new-type urbanization has an important impact on carbon emissions from the construction industry. To fill the gap in considering the spatial correlation and threshold characteristics of new-type urbanization on carbon emissions from the construction industry, this paper constructs a comprehensive evaluation indicator of new-type urbanization, and the spatial economic model and the threshold regression model are adopted to analyze the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2002 to 2020. The results indicate that (1) carbon emissions from China’s construction industry exhibit a significant positive spatial correlation, with more than half of provinces distributed as H-H and L-L types. (2) New-type urbanization has significant positive direct and indirect effects on carbon emissions in the construction industry; the labor efficiency, energy intensity, and development level of the construction industry and trade openness also have a significant spillover effect on carbon emissions from the construction industry. (3) At this stage, new-type urbanization exhibits a threshold effect on carbon emissions from the construction industry due to the different levels of development and energy intensity of the construction industry. After crossing the threshold value, the promotion effect of new-type urbanization on carbon emissions from the construction industry gradually increases. This paper provides a reference for promoting carbon emission reduction in the construction industry in the process of new-type urbanization.