The Research Of Integration Development Strategy Of Metropolitan Areas In Central And Western China

This is an era of cities and metropolitan areas. According to conservative estimation of United Nations, there will be4.5billion people living in cities while the world population reaches to9billion by2050, namely that global urban population will account for50%of the total global population, and this proportion is likely to rise to75%. Cities have become the focus of global development, while how to solve the problems of urban development will affect national and global economy. Metropolitan area is an upgraded version of city. In Metropolitan areas, the combined effect of central regions and radiations to their surrounding regions will be multiplied, as well as the new issues brought by metropolitans.In China, the urbanization is rapidly developing, as well as the remarkable developing process of metropolitan areas. Three major Metropolitans of China, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei city group, the Yangtze River Delta city group, and the Pearl River Delta city group, occupy2.8%of nationwide land area but gather a quarter of the population nationwide. Meanwhile, they create nearly45percent of whole country's GDP in2012. This is the best proof that elements of resources are fully gathered to central regions by metropolitans.During the economic development, metropolitan area has become one of the hottest research topic. The report of18th CPC National Congress,"CPC Central Committee Decisions on Deepening Reform of Major Issues" and "Governmental Report2014" apply requests to the development of metropolitan areas, including expansion of new urbanization, building and improving inter-regional coordination mechanism of cities and sharing of modern civilization."National New Urbanization Plan (2014-2020)" deepens the requirements of constructing new metropolitans, and identifies the future direction of metropolitan areas in central and western China.The integration strategy of metropolitan areas promotes regional cooperation, and emphasizes cost-sharing and benefit-sharing, which consistent with the main development direction of above documents, and is able to promote coordination of metropolitan area and regional economic development. However, on one hand, defects exist in the current cooperation mechanisms of China's metropolitan areas, affecting the development progress of the metropolitan area integration strategy; on the other hand, there are only a few relative research of metropolitan areas' integration, and those existing research mainly use economic geography and public administration research ideas, which are lack of empirical testing and difficult for targeted theoretical guiding.This study combines the development request of "National New Urbanization Plan (2014-2020)", especially the specific requirements of metropolitan areas in central and western China, through literature, theoretical, and empirical studies to examine the weakness of existing metropolitans in central and western China and to explore the adjust way of metropolitan area integration development strategies. It also uses the urban integration project of Nanning, Beihai, Qinzhou, Fangchenggang (short for NBQF project) as an example to carry on empirical research, and to point out policy recommendations for promoting the integration of metropolitan areas through system innovation.This study consists of seven chapters. The specific introductions are as follows:Chapter1, introduction. This chapter consists of three parts:firstly, the description of the research background and significance; secondly, literature review of related documents of domestic and international research by systematically regulating and objectively evaluating current research achievements towards metropolitan area integration, and providing theoretical support of the study; thirdly, illustrating research contents and methods, explaining the innovation of this study.Chapter2, the integration of metropolitan area theory. This chapter mainly discusses the dynamic mechanism and cooperation mechanism of metropolitan area integration development strategy from the perspective of gathering effect. Regarding to dynamic mechanisms, the chapter demonstrates the top-level design, the industrial clustering effect of metropolitan area integration, and the influence of regional competing and cooperation relationship towards competing metropolitan area integration. As for cooperation mechanism, the chapter focuses on principal participants, cooperation mode and cooperation direction of metropolitan area integration.Chapter3, the development status and evaluation of China's metropolitan areas. Firstly, the chapter analyses current development status of metropolitan area in eastern and western China from the macro point, and makes an overall assessment; secondly, the chapter analyzes the case of typical eastern, central and western metropolitan area (each for one), including Guangzhou and Foshan urban integration, Xiangtan metropolitan area and Wurumuqi and Changji integration, and summarizes strengths and weaknesses of these metropolitan areas from the micro point.Chapter4, the mechanism defects and reform advises of metropolitan area integration in central and western China. This chapter summarizes the inadequacies of central and western China's metropolitan areas and discusses approaches to solve these weakness. The chapter mainly analyses the problems of cooperative mechanisms of metropolitan areas in central and western China, including coordination mechanism, monitoring mechanism, incentive mechanism, and sharing mechanism, and explores system innovation to solve these problems.Chapter5, borrowing experiences from foreign metropolitan area development. This chapter mainly analyzes the development of New York, Paris and Sydney metropolitan areas separately through exploring their advanced experiences and practices from the formation, characteristics and revelation, including the discuss of centralized model and edge city model of metropolitan area development of New York, Paris, and Sydney.Chapter6, the development plan of city members of NBQF project and the development status of the project. This chapter discusses the development plan of four city members of NBQF projects, introduces the development process of and the significance of the project, and points out the existing problems.Chapter7, the indicators inspection and policy recommendations of the NBQF project. Firstly, the chapter uses latest indicators of the new urbanization, the proportion of three industries, regional correlation, regional market analysis and capacity factor test, to analyze the development status and existing problems of the NBQF project. Then it proposes policy recommendations to promote the process of the project, by means of improving coordination mechanism, monitoring mechanism, incentive mechanism and sharing mechanism. In addition, the chapter introduces centralized approach and "edge cities" developing model to improve the process of NBQF project, plans future vision for the North Bay metropolitan areas, and discusses how NBQF project integrates with the major cities of North bay.Summary and Outlook. This chapter combines the theoretical, empirical and practical research of metropolitan area integration, and analyses developing prospects of metropolitan areas in central and western China. Then it makes recommendations for the future development of metropolitan areas integration and the NBQF project, and proposes the inadequacies of this study and the direction of future efforts.