Urbanization In China Essay

In addition to the growth of proportion of urban population, the increase of number of cities also reflects urbanization process from a different perspective. After reform cities began to regain attention from the government. In China administrative force has always been an assignable factor which significantly affected the fluctuation of number of cities. The formation of Chinese city hierarchy has its origin in the ancient time. For a very long period in Chinese history “cities were predominantly administrative centers and their political functions were more significant than their commercial functions in organizing urban social life.”

In nowadays China, on one hand, the outstanding economic performance of a settlement can upgrade its administrative

In this period, there was a surge of numbers of small and middle sized cities. However this rapid increase in number of cities pulled down the average population sizes of these cities. Administrative interference did not lead to development of small and middle sized cities. Because of the population scale of these cities were far from the optimal range , agglomeration effect and economies of scales could not act well, thus the efficiency of resource utilization was not ideal. Many of these newly established cities was not viable economically to support investment in infrastructure or to offer public service such as medical care, education etc. In order to realize high efficiency in city area, the physical transformation of land use structure should develop in consistent with demographical structural change. Jia, Han Hoekman and McGranahan in their research revealed that from 1980s until now the urban built-up land has been expanding much faster than the increase in urban population. Over-urbanization in terms of cities’ number and land-use structure may lead to over construction of urban infrastructure. Investment in some less populated urban area cannot yield high returns in the future because the efficiency of infrastructure utilization is too low, thus the dynamics urban economy cannot be activated. The emergence of many “Ghost Cities” in China is product of excessive expansion of urban constructive land and