Analysis of the Characteristics of City Scale Distribution and Evolutionary Trends in China ()
ABSTRACT
Based on the
urban resident population statistics from 2005 to 2018, this paper
analyzes the distribution and evolution of city scale in China by screening
city samples according to the threshold criteria and using empirical research
methods such as the City Primacy Index, the Rank-Scale Rule, the Gini
coefficient of city scale, Kernel Density Estimation and Markov transfer
matrix. The results show that: the most populous city in China has obvious
advantages. The population distribution is concentrated in high order cities
and in accordance with the law of order-scale; the economic scale of cities is in a
concentrated state, the gap between the economic development levels of
different types of cities is large, and the megacities are more attractive,
which to a certain extent limit the development of the scale of the rest of the
cities; the number of China’s city
population is increasing, however, the gap between the population
scale of other cities and the most populous city continues to be large, and the
structure of city population scale is not reasonable enough; megacities and megalopolises
keep their original scale levels unchanged to a large extent, and the scale
transition between the two types of cities is rather difficult. Finally, based
on the explanatory framework of the dynamics of city scale evolution, policy
recommendations are proposed to promote a more balanced distribution of city
scale.
Share and Cite:
Zhang, M. and Jia, Z. (2021) Analysis of the Characteristics of City Scale Distribution and Evolutionary Trends in China.
Open Journal of Statistics,
11, 443-462. doi:
10.4236/ojs.2021.113028.
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