城市舒适性:中国城市竞争力评估的新视角及实证研判

Urban amenity: A new perspective and empirical testimony on China's city competitiveness assessment

城市舒适性已经日益成为城市发展的新动力及其综合竞争力评估的新视角。基于国外城市舒适性内涵、需求理论及中西社会经济发展与文化差异,对中国城市舒适性概念框架及空间格局分异进行探索性实证研究。研究表明:1在分类舒适性中,南部沿海地区的城市健康环境等级最高,自我发展环境以经济基础较好城市为优,休闲环境等级从东部、西部到中部依次降低,社会氛围环境与自我发展环境在空间格局上呈现较高的相似性;2综合城市舒适性从东部沿海到西部内陆逐渐降低,舒适性最高两个等级所涵盖城市主要分布在东部沿海,包括北京、深圳、上海、南京、广州、厦门和海口,此外,武汉和西安分别是中部和西部舒适度最高的城市;3综合城市舒适性水平与净迁移人口之间呈高度相关,其与城市迁入人才之间的相关性更为显著,表明城市舒适性对人才具有特别的吸引力。因此,如何从城市舒适性视角摸索出一套更具针对性和操作性的中国城市竞争力评估体系,对未来中国新型城镇化下城市综合竞争力的打造至关重要。

Theories on sustainable urban development keep changing with socioeconomic changes. In recent years, urban amenity has been increasingly regarded as a new urban development approach and received wide attention in West, while only few studies have been conducted in this field in China. Taking reference from existing researches in West, this article aims at filling this gap by building a customized conceptual framework based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to fit Chinese urban development situation and help the country to improve its urban competitiveness by adopting urban amenity as a new strategy in the context of new urbanization pursuit. Based on a theoretical framework and a comprehensive index system, the article carefully evaluates the urban amenity of major cities in China, and analyzes the correlation between urban amenity and net migration as well as talents migration. The main conclusions are as follows：（1） For the four sub- categories of urban amenity, the health environment in southern cities is better than that in northern ones, and cities with high level of self- realization environment are mainly with good economic base. Little surprisingly, the recreation environment level of central China is the lowest among the three regions in the country. And the spatial layout of social atmosphere is similar with that of self- realization environment, indicating that they might have a reciprocal causation relationship;（2） The level of overall urban amenity decreases from eastern coastal region to western inland region, and cities in the highest two levels are mainly located along eastern coastal China, including Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Xiamen and Haikou. The overall urban amenity performance of Wuhan and Xi’an are the highest in central and western China respectively;（3） While there is a strong correlation between urban amenity and in-migration in general, the correlation between urban amenity and talent in- migration is stronger. Based on analyses and the findings, this article puts forward two policy implications：（I） The excessive concentration of population in big cities in China is largely the consequence of high concentration of urban amenities in these cities, therefore only through relocation and construction of high level public services in medium- and small- sized cities along with their industrial restructuring could it alleviate the overcrowding in those megacities like Beijing,Shanghai and Shenzhen;（II） Given urban amenity is critic for attracting talent, medium and small sized cities should pay more attention to consistently improving their urban amenity facilities and management, which will help them to enhance their innovation capacity and overall competitiveness in gaining high share of development in China’s recent process of economic transformation from traditional industrial to innovative and knowledge- oriented economy.