中国城市体系规模分布扁平化:多维区域验证与经济解释

The Flat Distribution of City Size in China:A Multidimensional Regional Validation and Its Economic Interpretations

本文针对中国城市规模分布研究中特有的困难,运用校正后的夜间灯光作为城市规模测度数据,在行政区域、随机区域以及空间俱乐部区域三个细分维度上,考察了中国城市体系规模分布的特征及其动态演进。研究发现:中国城市规模分布并不服从齐普夫定律,而是呈现出典型的扁平化特征,且这一扁平化趋势在不断加剧。小城市高速增长及中等规模城市相对增长停滞是上述典型性事实出现的统计学成因,其背后的经济学机理可以从因市场互动而形成的"借用规模"现象加以解释。本文的政策启示是,构建以完善的交通基础设施相连接的多中心城市网络可能是中国未来城市体系重构的重要方向。

Does the city size distribution in China follow the Zipf＇s law？ Will the conclusion be affected by the redrawing of regions？ In this paper,facing the difficulties of measuring the size distribution of urban systems,we innovatively use the calibrated night time light data to measure the sizes of cities in China. We empirically study the characteristics of the city size distribution in China and its dynamic evolution in three dimensions： administration areas,random regions and spatial club areas. The analysis shows that the city size distribution in China does not obey Zipf＇s Law,but the urban systems have a typical,and growingly obvious,flat pattern. One explanation of such a flat pattern can be the rapid growth of small-sized cities as well as the slow or even stagnant development of large and medium-sized cities. Meanwhile,the spatial interaction of market leads to a phenomenon of ＂the borrowed size＂. This paper provides an important policy implication that,in the future,China should further improve the transportation infrastructure and build a more efficient and polycentric network of urban systems.