An Empirical Study On The Urbanization Quality And Its Influencing Factors In Hunan Province

Urbanization is the route that we must take to modernization. The present and the future20years will be the critical moment of the rapid development of Hunan urbanization. It has played an important role in the development strategies of middle grown-up countries, and so it has been an indispensable part of this strategy. However, with the promotion of Hunan urbanization, the problem of urbanization quality will be prominent little by little. For example, the problems of vast population with limited farmland, spatial population density and bearing capacity of the resources and environment, the problem of suburbanization, the difference between towns and country and so on will influence the quality and process of Hunan urbanization. This paper adopts logical positivism analysis and structure analysis under international standards, regarding the development of people as the main body, thinks of the city development as the core, and refers to the balanced development between urban and rural areas as a guide. Through the space-time combination converting of the systems such as economy, society, and ecology, it will firstly boost productivity transformation and be benefit for improving the resource allocation efficiency and raising rational environment and resource utilization. Secondly, it will promote the relative social equality which is more beneficial to realize sustainable development of urban-rural economy and social balanced progress, so that we can clearly define urbanization and the connotation and extension of urbanization quality. On this basis, it set up the analysis framework of the urbanization quality and its influence factors. Through making up multilevel hierarchical structural model, it reflects the hierarchical relationship and mutual influence of every factor. It also applies some related data of Hunan province and its cities to examine and demonstrate the theoretical hypothesis of the urbanization quality and its factors.Urbanization quality refers to internal natures and the inherent law of the city. It is the effective collection level between the population space transferring and ecological space, social space and ecological space, etc. It is a concentrated reflection of the scope of economic efficiency, the extent of social progress and the environmental sustainability degree under a certain region space condition. It needs the comprehensive study on the view of the historical dimension of time and intersection dimension of space, specifically including the development capacity of city itself and its potential ability, the reasonable scale of city and moderate economic agglomeration, whether the structure between the city and the degree of integration and synergetic development of the regions and the structure of spatial range under city system is reasonable; the coordination and stability degree between the complex inner system of urbanization and the speed of urbanization; and the relative capacity between the city scale and the resources and environment. This paper analyzes these nine dimensions one by one based on a theoretical frameworkThe analysis adopts the thought and method of structural analysis, for the quality of urbanization is a very complicated system. Under the conditional constrains of the existing theories and analysis tools, we need to divide the connected and inter-restrained elements of urbanization into pieces and then study them one by one to ensure the scientificity and reliability of research conclusions.Firstly, beginning with the extension and connotation of urbanization quality, this paper adopts the data gathered between1992and2012in China Statistical Yearbook, Hunan Statistical Yearbook and China Compendium of Statistical1949-2008, in which some data collected by calculating the raw data, and builds index system that is made up of148indicators to measure urbanization quality. By carrying out Pearson correlation analysis on the original index system, constructing partial correlation network combined with the internal contacts between indicators, and fully reflecting the inherently essential construction of the urbanization index system, the article finally gets an urbanization quality index system which is composed of59indicators inspected from the longitudinal dimension and builds an integrated composite index of the urbanization quality. Then, According to the availability and continuity of the cities’data, the annual data of the14cities of Hunan Province from2004to2012is selected and it builds the urbanization quality index system that is made up of50indexes inspected from the horizontal dimension.According to the two index systems, it respectively uses the Lasso regression method and projection pursuit model and evaluates the urbanization quality of Hunan province horizontally and longitudinally. The measure results of urbanization quality in Hunan province indicate that over the recent years, urbanization quality has been improved in a certain extent both at the overall level and regional level, but it still remains a large gap among different districts.Secondly, this paper constructs a systematically, theoretically analyzing framework under mainstream economics paradigm to study urbanization quality and its influence factors. It puts forward nine basic theory dimensions according to the urbanization quality and six theoretical hypothesis of urbanization quality promotion by adopting the method of inductive reasoning. Through the establishment of a multilevel hierarchy model and interpretative structural model analysis method being introduced on the study of urbanization quality, it directly and distinctly reflects the interaction and hierarchical relationship between various factors influencing the urbanization quality, and it summarizes into two kinds of basic influence factors inside and outside the cityThirdly, according to the framework of the urbanization quality and its influence factors, an empirical study is made by using large scale correlation index data of Hunan province and its14cities to verify the six theoretical hypothesis, and it also makes an empirical study on the harmony and stability between the internal urbanization system and the speed of the urbanization, the scale of the urbanization and the capacity of the resources and the environment. Through the empirical analyses of nines dimensions in city development level, development potential, inner-urban concentration, external synergy, external amalgamation, spatial structure reasonability, urbanization quality coordination, stability and sustainability, we can find that the estimated results of the model are consistent with the conclusion of theoretical research, which has verified that the improvement of the city comprehensive development level, persistent development potential, proper urban scale and economy agglomeration, external synergy of industrial structure between the cities, mutual amalgamation among cities and between the city and the rural, rational urban-system spatial structures all have formed an obvious positive relationship with urbanization quality and are the positive factors of promoting urbanization quality.In conclusion, by building a theoretical framework, we can use a combination of existing theories and methods to research the dimensionality one by one surrounding the analysis framework. We can also verify this hypothesis and draw a consistent conclusion on the basis of the one-by-one analysis. Under this framework, it analyzes the interior and exterior influence factors, discusses the internal discipline and conditions of the urbanization system achieving the harmonious, stable and sustainable development, which applies on path analysis of promoting the urbanization quality of Hunan to achieve this research subject.Therefore, developing the active effects effectively over the nine dimensions, promoting optimistic interaction between the internal and external factors of urbanization, forming the systematic combined effects and forward spatial effects, facilitating the effective collection of physical space, social space and ecological space of inner system of Hunan urbanization, realizing the coordination, stability and sustainable development of urbanization in dimensions of time and space in Hunan province based on respecting spatial differences, transforming city agglomeration development into balanced development between urban and rural areas are the goals that we should seek after.