Research On The Impact Of China’s High-speed Railway On City Scale

The impact of traffic on cities has always been a hot issue in the academic field.There is no doubt that the construction and opening of high-speed rail has far-reaching significance to cities,but due to the different location conditions,population structure and other factors,the opening of high-speed rail has different impacts on cities along the route.At the same time,the opening of high-speed rail has profoundly changed every aspect of the city.Existing literature studies have found that the opening of high-speed rail has a significant impact on regional economic growth,population mobility,regional income gaps,and industrial structure.More and more scholars have realized that the impact of the opening of high-speed rail on the city is all-round,wide-ranging and deep-seated,and tried to study the impact of high-speed rail on the city from a comprehensive perspective in order to better play the effect of high-speed railways and optimize the layout of high-speed railway construction.Therefore,taking Chinese prefecture-level cities as the empirical research object and studying the effect of high-speed railway on city scale has not only strong practical significance but also very important theoretical significance.This article mainly uses related methods such as qualitative and quantitative analysis,entropy weighting,and two-way fixed effects model for the research.The research ideas of this paper: First,the domestic and foreign related research is reviewed from the perspective of economy,population and urban space to understand the latest research results on the impact of high-speed rail on urban development and to clarify the research content of this article.Secondly,by combining the theory of transportation and regional development and other related literature,it theoretically explains the mechanism of the high-speed rail on the scale.Then,it determines the measurement index of the city scale and uses the entropy method to weight the index,and calculates the city scale of 284 cities.Based on the data variability and the limitation of the number of model processing groups and control groups,the two-way fixed effects model was used to empirically analyze the relationship between my country’s high-speed rail construction and city scale from 2007 to 2016,and then it further analyzes the heterogeneity from the perspective of economic region division.Finally,it draws the conclusions and put forward related suggestions according to the research.There are six parts in this paper including introduction,basic concepts and related theories,current analysis of urban scale and high-speed rail construction in my country,model selection and variable setting,empirical analysis of high-speed railway and urban scale,conclusions and suggestions.The introduction part mainly analyzes the research background,research significance,research method and technical route of the article.Through analyzing and combing the related literature on the impact of high-speed rail on urban economy,population,space and the factors affecting urban scale,understand the latest research perspectives,methods and ideas,and determine the research direction and objects of this article.The second part is the theoretical analysis of the basic concepts and related theories.It specifically defines the related concepts of city scale and high-speed railway,and analyzes the mechanism of high-speed railway on city scale and other issues.The third part of the analysis of the current situation of our country’s city scale and high-speed rail construction by building an index evaluation system and calculating the city scale of 284 cities from2007 to 2016.The fourth part is model selection and variable setting including measurement model determination method,related variable description,descriptive statistical results and data source introduction.The fifth part mainly includes five contents: the first is the national benchmark analysis,the second is the discussion of endogenous issues,the third is the time effect analysis,the fourth is the heterogeneity analysis,the fifth is the robustness test.The sixth part of conclusions and recommendations summarizes the above-mentioned research and puts forward policy recommendations in a targeted manner.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: First,according to theoretical analysis,high-speed rail indirectly realizes the impact on city scale through the subsystem acting on city scale.The mechanism of action is divided into economic scale mechanism,population scale mechanism,and spatial scale mechanism.It has 11 ways in total.Second,in the ten years between 2007 and 2016,the overall urban scale of our cities has been expanding.The growth rate of cities in the central and western regions is particularly obvious,while the growth of cities in the northeast is weak.The gap between the east and the west has narrowed,and the gap between the north and the south has gradually emerged.Cities with high administrative levels still have a comparative advantage,and some characteristic cities in the east have performed well.Third,in general,high-speed railways can significantly promote the growth of my country’s urban scale.The opening of high-speed railways has increased the scale of cities across the country by an average of 0.00236 levels,and the conclusions of endogenous treatment and robustness tests are still valid.At the same time,other factors such as fiscal revenue and the number of college students can also affect the size of a city.Fourth,there is a problem of heterogeneity in the impact of high-speed rail on the scale of the city.In terms of economic regions,the impact of the opening of high-speed rail on cities in the northeast and west is higher than that in the central and eastern regions.In terms of administrative levels of cities,the opening of high-speed rail has an obvious promotion effect on cities below the provincial capital,but it has no significant effect on cities above the provincial capital.In terms of urban charm,the high-speed rail has a significant effect on the urban scale of small and medium-sized cities,but has no significant effect on large cities.In terms of geographical area,the high-speed rail has a significant effect on promoting the scale of cities in the south,but it has no significant effect on cities in the north.The innovations of this article are as follows: First,the sample selection range of this article is wide,the time span is wide,and the situation involving 284prefecture-level cities in ten years,which makes the conclusion of this article more general.The second is by referring to the existing research experience to design a set of evaluation system to measure the scale of each city,which overcomes the error caused by the use of proxy variables to study the city scale.The third is to change the impact of a single factor as the research object,and try to explore the comprehensive impact of high-speed rail on the city.The shortcomings of this article are as follows:First,due to the data availability,personal research ability and other aspects,this paper exists the understanding deviation,at the same time,there is room for further discussion in this research.Second,in the long run,there may be some direct effects that have not been highlighted,and the potential effects need to be further studied.