Spatial Evolution And Economic Performance Of City Clusters In China

Under the background of economic globalization and urban regionalization,the flow and exchange of economic resource elements gradually break the boundaries of a single city,and begin to carry out deeply in a larger regional scope.Cities are more and more closely linked in regional and even national scales.City clusters,as giant spatial units with different levels and scales of cities,have become crucial geographical units of international division of labor and competition as well as the development of regional economy within the whole country.They are also the main spatial carriers in the process of new-type urbanization in China,playing an important role in promoting regional economic development.Therefore,the research on the evolution of city clusters’ spatial structure and economic performance is of great significance to the optimization of city clusters’ spatial structure,the in-depth promotion of spatial economy and the scientific formulation of spatial strategy.In the existing studies of spatial structure evolution and economic performance of city clusters,there are more theoretical or qualitative studies,and less quantitative empirical studies.In the empirical studies,there are also problems such as different selection of research samples,more defects in research data,insufficient rigor of research methods and difficulty in reaching consensus on research conclusions.Based on the global population database of LANDSCAN and the global land use data from ESA,this paper identifies urban entities and measures the spatial structure of city clusters from a monocentric-polycentric perspective.On this basis,the trend and characteristics of spatial structure evolution,the influencing factors of evolution and the relationship between spatial structure and economic performance of 13 city clusters were analyzed from 2000 to 2015 by using both the description methods and the econometric and statistical testing methodsThe results show that from 2000 to 2015,the spatial structure evolution of the majority of city clusters maintains overall stability while showing a weak trend of monocentricity.The spatial structure index values of city clusters with different economic development levels are concentrated in a certain range during the evolution process.In terms of the influencing factors of the evolution of spatial structure,this paper pays more attention on information-based factors such as the Internet in addition to the general economic,political and social factors.The results show that at the scale of city clusters,information-based factors promote the evolution of spatial structure to the direction of polycentricity.In terms of the relationship between spatial structure and economic performance,the growth rate of GDP per capita and GDP per capita are both taken as the proxy variables of economic performance.Besides OLS fixed effect regression,this paper uses the instrumental variable estimation to eliminate the possible causal relationship between spatial structure and economic performance.The results show that the polycentric spatial structure of city clusters is more conducive to the improvement of economic performance.The following policy implication is expected to provide the government an empirical basis for formulating and implementing the polycentric spatial development strategy of city clusters scientifically.Regarding the finding that the polycentric structure is more effective than the monocentric structure in promoting economic performance,the government should promote the overall balanced distribution level of economic factors in the city clusters through giving full play to the radiating and driving functions of primary cities.Meanwhile,the government should construct and improve the inter-city infrastructure and informatization level vigorously within the city cluster.Also,a coordination,communication and control mechanism across the administrative regions is necessary.These measurements can act as an important instrument to establish a reasonable and orderly spatial structure system of city clusters,and provide spatial guarantee for the sustainable development of regional economy of city clusters.