Study Of The Economics Of The Urban Network System

The economic development is the process of urbanizing rural population. At the present stage, speeding up the process of urbanization has been established as one of the regional development targets everywhere in our country. Although a lot of experts and scholars also have carried out thorough and meticulous researches into the city size of our country, even that of the globe, they put particular stresses on a perspective of analyzing a single city instead of the whole urban system, especially, they have not explored the network of urban system and the structure of the crunode, letting alone existent reasons and mechanism of the city network system. As a result, this dissertation chooses the urban network system as its research object, aiming to make some contributions towards promoting the process of urbanization in new phase.First the dissertation discusses some conceptions of the city and the urban system, reviews relevant theories on city and urban system, and points out limitation of the agglomeration economy theory in analyzing the city size and the inadequacy of the existing theories of urban system. Next it makes the assertion that the analytical method of the agglomeration economy theory should become a basic analytical tool if a more thorough research into the development and the progress of the city network system is to be carried out. After the method has elucidated relevant problems, a new analytical tool, namely, the analytical method of the network economy that can explain this actual fluctuant process and its sequel should be introduced, and only then should how factors of production transfer and assemble through the city network to promote economic development be done a further research.Because the past research concerning the cybereconomy was confined mostly within the category of the digital economy based on the Internet rather than consider its generality and universality, consequently, the paper discusses the properties of the cybereconomy more universally, redefines it, enlarges its connotation and also holds a deep discussion about the contents of cybereconomy as well as diseconomy. On the other hand, the thesis describes its form and content of the current network in detail, indicating that the physical network and the information network facilitate the development and evolution of the city, and it is the city that is exactly the compound crunode of these networks.After discussing correlative conceptions on the city and network, the dissertation goes further into research contents of the city network system. Having first analyzed the internal mechanism and bearings between a region and the city network system, and probed into the economics reasons of its existence and evolution of the city system, the treatise interprets two existing kinds of distribution of the city system—the divergent and reticulate phenomena in economics. Analyzing the compound network system of city with the method of equilibrium analysis based on the established model, the treatise dissertates the structural conversion and fluctuant process of the city network system, puts forward the idea of the network layered structure of the optimal city and analyses its variable mode through a discussion on its model.Finally, with the regulative function performed by the government and market in the development of the city network system during the process of urbanization in our country being analyzed, along with the investment mode of the city network system being researched, the paper makes some practical suggestions concerning trains of thoughts and pertinent policies.The textual innovative points are mainly as follows:Firstly, the treatise has researched the bearings between centralization and decentralization in the course of urbanization, especially, the function fulfilled by the agglomeration economy and the cybereconomy on the development of the urban system. It also defines the decentralized economy as a kind of traditional economy which is uneconomical, embodying the primitive economy, the nomadic economy and the traditional agricultural economy. On the contrary, the centralized agglomeration economy can save the dealing costs, lower the costs of coordination and division of labor, which is characterized by external economy, and provide necessary conditions for the scale economy of enterprise. Therefore, the agglomeration economy is the important motivity to push the economic development.Secondly, the treatise elaborates that agglomeration needs transfer from decentralization to centralization, which can bring in transfer economy, in addition, a constant optimal city size will not exist at all in the agglomeration economy under the condition of network. In light of the uneconomical phenomena—stagnation and transregional reverses often occurred in the development of regional economies, the thesis re-elaborates the economic theory concerning transregional transfer in different regions. In the dual structure in urban and rural economy, that labour force difference in marginal productivity between different sectors causes the labor force to transfer from the branch of farming and other traditional sectors to secondary industry and tertiary industry, that in fact is the circulation of labour force between different sectors, which will not only supplies modern economic sectors with sufficient labour force to develop, also foster labour productivity of the branch of farming, thus, the national economy will maintain a sound development.Thirdly, making use of the analytical method of the cybereconomy, the treatise puts forward the hypothesis that under the condition of the cybereconomy, as for the city size, a constant optimal scale does not exist. In the past, according to the equilibrium analysis that agglomeration is economical or uneconomical, economics circles think that a more constant scale exists in cities with a population from 1,400,000 to 4,000,000, both a larger one and a smaller one are uneconomical. The inherent deficiency propagated by this kind of analytical method is this method ignores the cybereconomy comprised of modern transportation, information and physical distribution. Once these elements of transportation, communication ,etc are introduced, the preceding analyses will become invalid. As is known to all, we are experiencing such a situation in which a system consisted of isolation, villages and cities is changing towards an urban network system that is open and interlinked. This has varied so much from the situation in which, as Lewis has analysed, there exist merely the traditional agricultural sector and modern industry sector that an innovative theory has to be concluded.Fourthly, the thesis puts forward that the process of changing over from isolation to the network system nurtures the development of a city system. We systematically analyse how the traditional spacial economy and society changes towards modern one, summarize the rule how the decentralized and isolated economic pattern transfers towards the inter-economic structure interlinked by electric power, transportation and information etc. Conclusively, the thesis points out the economic development nurtures a process from isolation to network structure.