Adjustment of Administrative Divisions and Upgrading of Industrial Structure in Hefei Metropolitan Area:Taking"Partitions of Chaohu"as a Quasi-natural Experiment

Administrative regions are an important environment for the operation of China's market economy.The relevant economic subjects cannot predict the policy of adjustment of administrative divisions and carry out conscious migration behavior,adjustment of administrative divisions can be regarded as a quasi-natural experiment.The three cities of Hefei,Wuhu,and Ma'anshan,which are directly related to the adjustment of the administrative division of Chaohu,are taken as the treatment group,and the seven adjacent cities of Lu'an,Huainan,Chuzhou,Bengbu,Anqing,Chizhou,and Tongling are taken as the control group.Differences-in-Differences method and relevant control variables affecting the upgrading of industrial structure are used to test.The test results show that"Partitions of Chaohu"has a significant industrial structure upgrading effect by promoting the optimization of spatial layout,the cross-regional flow of production factors and the effective management of Chaohu Lake Basin.At the same time,the increase of total retail sales of consumer goods,urban fixed assets investment,public utility expenses in science,education,culture and health,and population plays a significant positive role in promoting the upgrading of industrial structure,while foreign direct investment plays a certain inhibition role in the upgrading of industrial structure.In order to meet the ever-developing space demands and enhance the impact on surrounding areas,the Hefei metropolitan area should be driven by technological innovation,strengthen the integration of industrial chains,improve the business environment and transportation network,and continuously promote the upgrading of industrial structure and the formation and development of new productive forces.

The Differences between County,County-level City and Municipal District in the System of Administrative Divisions in China

Administrative division is an important means of political power reorganization and management,resource integration and optimal allocation,which profoundly shapes the spatial layout of urban development in China.To clarify and compare differences between counties,county-level cities and municipal districts is the primary premise for the study of administrative division and urban development.This paper analyzes the institutional differences between counties and county-level cities,as well as counties,county-level cities and municipal districts,from the aspects of organizational structure,urban construction planning,land management,finance,taxation and public services.The research shows that the establishment of counties,county-level cities and municipal districts adapt to different levels and stages of economic and social development,and the conversion from county to county-level city and the conversion from county(or county-level city)to municipal district are both important transformation ways to change their administrative systems,which has different management system and operation pattern.At the same time,the transformation of county-level administrative region is also a“double-edged sword”,we should think about the administrative system as a whole to decide whether it should be adjusted,and effectively respond to the actual needs of local economic and social development.

From administering administrative divisions to regional public administration： a game analysis of evolution in the pattern of governance by the government

Regional public administration represents in essence an institutional change in the pattern of governance by the government, in that it breaks down the original institutional arrangements of the administration of administrative divisions and embarks on a new process of institutional evolution of the patterns of interest distribution in society. Present throughout this process is a game between different interests, leading to the final emergence of a new system - a new contractual setup resulting from the playing out of the relevant factors. These games take place mainly between the central and the local authorities and among the latter. Setting up a cooperative approach of ＂repeated gaming＂ when the game runs into possible difficulties, developing mechanisms conducive to better information exchange and to bilateral or multilateral consultation, further reshaping government functions by cutting the interest ties that link local authorities with socioeconomic entities, and strengthening the central authorities＇ macro-control functions are efficient guidance measures for setting up a system of regional public administration and realizing change in governance patterns.

Spheres of Urban Influence and Factors in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region Based on Viewpoint of Administrative Division Adjustment

The coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei has been elevated as China's important strategy. And, the priority in considering how to bring the maximum effect of their coordinated development into play is to delineate the spheres of urban influence with regard to the cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region. By building an evaluation index system of urban comprehensive strength, this paper applies the principal component analysis method to determine centrality strength of the cities, and the breakpoint theory and weighted Voronoi diagram to identify the spheres of urban influence in all central cities of the region. Results show that 13 central cities within the region greatly differ in strength, which can be classified into four tiers and that the spheres of urban influence do not have a high goodness of fit with administrative jurisdiction scope. Cities like Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang and Handan have larger spheres of urban, spheres of urban influence in Tangshan and Qinhuangdao are basically consistent with their administrative jurisdiction scopes, and seven cities including Langfang and Baoding have smaller spheres of urban influence. So according to these cities' comprehensive strength and spheres of influence, the region can be divided into five plates: Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Tangshan and Handan. The major influence factors for inconsistency between spheres of urban influence and spheres of jurisdiction include difference in urban administrative ranking, small number of central cities with weak strength, discrepancy in the number of counties under jurisdiction, unreasonable spheres of jurisdiction and diversity in topographical conditions. In order to solve the imbalance in the spheres of urban influence and those of jurisdiction and better facilitate the coordinated development of the region, it is advised to adjust administrative areas so as to obtain more optimized urban spatial layout and more reasonable urban scale hierarchy system.

Evolutionary Pattern and Effect of Administrative Division Adjustment During Urbanization of China:Empirical Analysis on Multiple Scales

The adjustment of administrative divisions is one of the important factors guiding China's urbanization, which has profound economic and social effects for regional development. In this paper, we comprehensively describe the process of the adjustment of administrative divisions at provincial and municipal levels in China and summarize the effects on the basic structure and patterns of the spatial development. We quantitatively assess the effects on fields such as urbanization and social economy through the use of multidimensional scaling. The results show that: 1) Upgrading county to municipality(or city-governed district) is the main way of adjusting the administrative divisions. It is also an important factor in the spatial differentiation of interprovincial urbanization. China's population urbanization can be divided into four patterns including interprovincial migration, provincial migration, natural growth, and growth caused by the adjustment of administrative divisions, which is also the main reason for the increased Chinese urbanization rate at the provincial level. 2) Taking the city of Beijing as an example, we generalize five adjustment patterns made to administrative divisions: the set-up of sub-districts, the set-up of regional offices, the upgrading of townships to sub-districts, the upgrading of townships to towns, and the set-up of towns and the addition of new regional offices. We summarize the municipal urban spatial structure, including the sub-district office area in the central urban area, the regional office area in the new urban area, the mixed area of villages, towns, and sub-district offices in the suburb area, and the township area in the outer suburb area. 3) The adjustment of administrative divisions triggers a significant circulative accumulation effect, resulting in the spatial locking of population and industrial agglomeration. It affects the evolution of the urban spatial form and plays an important role in shaping the urban spatial structure to move to the characteristic of multicenter. In general, the adjustment of administrative divisions was an important factor affecting the inflated statistical level of urbanization and also an important driving force for the evolution of Chinese urban spatial organization structure.

Administrative division system changes and urbanization in China

s—This paper ana1yses the relationship between the administrative division system changes (ADSC) and the urbanization process in China, especially in Guangdong Province since the 1980s. It points out that there are three high tides in ADSC since the 1980s relevant to the changes of economic development. The guiding principle for ADSC is to give local government incentives by transferring more administrative powers to them and bringing along regional development by central city. This paper also discusses problems existed and future prospectives.

Evaluation of regional water resources carrying capacity based on binary index method and reduction index method

Based on the regional water resources carrying capacity(WRCC)evaluation principles and evaluation index system in the National Technical Outline of Water Resources Carrying Capacity Monitoring and Early Warning(hereafter referred to as the Technical Outline),this paper elaborates on the collection and sorting of the basic data of water resources conditions,water resources development and utilization status,social and economic development in basins,analysis and examination of integrity,consistency,normativeness,and rationality of the basic data,and the necessity of WRCC evaluation.This paper also describes the technique of evaluating the WRCC in prefecture-level cities and city-level administrative divisions in the District of the Taihu Lake Basin,which is composed of the Taihu Lake Basin and the Southeastern River Basin.The evaluation process combines the binary index evaluation method and reduction index evaluation method.The former,recommended by the Technical Outline,uses the total water use and the amount of exploited groundwater as evaluation indices,showing stronger operability,while the latter is developed by simplifying and optimizing the comprehensive index system with greater systematicness and completeness.The mutual validation and adjustment of the results of the above-mentioned two evaluation methods indicate that the WRCC of the District of the Taihu Lake Basin is overloaded in general because some prefecture-level cities and city-level administrative divisions in the Taihu Lake Basin and the Southeastern River Basin are in a severely overloaded state.In order to explain this conclusion,this paper analyzes the causes of WRCC overloading from the aspects of basin water environment,water resources development and utilization,water resources regulation and control ability,water resources utilization efficiency,and water resources management.

Space-time Relationship Between Urban Municipal District Adjustment and Built-up Area Expansion in China

Municipal district adjustment and built-up area expansion are two main forms of urban spatial expansion. Using geometric methods, this study constructed a space-time path method to characterize the space-time relationship between municipal district adjustment and built-up area expansion, and drew the space-time path sets of major prefecture level cities from 2000 to 2010 by constructing a coordinate system of the standardized built-up areas and municipal district areas. This divided them into four quadrants, namely, H-H, L-H, L-L, and H-L, based on the relative mean value to evaluate overall and individual stability by three indexes of the trajectory vectors, namely, direction, length, and slope. Results provide the following conclusions. 1) Municipal district adjustment is an effective spatial expansion way for city-scale promotion in China. Since 2000, municipal district adjustments have been mainly distributed in the eastern coastal regions and mid-western capital cities along with their surrounding cities. 2) Municipal district adjustment affects the scale and status of a city in China. Many cities that have expanded municipal districts behave stably and cross quadrants. 3) Great majority second-tier cities have effectively promoted their scale and status through municipal district adjustment. The municipal district adjustment of medium and small cities in the mid-west area is relatively advanced compared with city development. 4) Municipal district adjustment with minimal magnitude is severely restricted from upgrading the scale and status of a city. The transformation from entirely incorporated counties or cities to municipal districts should be the mainstream in future municipal district adjustment.

A Dynamic Planner as a Sustainable Planning Way： A Bridge between the Law, Technical Knowledge and the Local Population

The social and environmental demands in Brazilian cities are usually neglected by the local municipal powers due to a heavy bias toward speculative capital. The main issue is a public administration that benefits the private initiative instead of popular and environmental values and needs. Despite federal efforts at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21 st century, water resources and urban reform policies are not able to ensure a connection between these two issues in the urban environment. Aiming at showing a new approach of citizenship and environmental rights in a developing country, Bauru, a Brazilian city located in the state of S^o Paulo, was used as a study case. In this scenario, the research is based on the action research method, in which a dynamic profile of the researchers was adopted in order to solidify environmental and social issues in the urban planning process. This article shows the advantages in using the river basin as an urban planning territory in the city master plan, and providing continuous technique support to the citizen, through the role played by the researcher-planner between government and population, as a way to possibly reach social and environmental interests. The territorial perception of the river basin by citizens brings effective environmental and social results.

The Significance of Geographical Factors in Genealogy to Language Research--Taking Liao’s Audio-visual Genealogy as an Example

The geographical information reflected in a traditional genealogy mainly has two aspects.On the one hand,it is the administrative division,human geography,and other general environmental conditions of the ethnic group.On the other hand,it points to the specific origin and migration of family members in the family tree.In addition to affecting the formation and evolution of language,these factors will also affect the development trend of language behavior by promoting the psychology of people’s geographic identity.From these data,we find that geographic factors in the genealogy have a non-negligible relationship with the geographical spread of the language of the genealogy.

行政区与功能区耦合的中国县域空间治理模式

County-level administrative divisions and main functional areas are two basic governance systems that act concurrently on county-level geographical units.The administrative division governance focuses on local administration and regular social services,while the main functional area governance focuses on differentiated territorial space development.This paper summarizes the emerging trends and requirements of countylevel spatial governance in China and analyzes the coupling relationship of county-level administrative divisions and main functional areas.Then,the paper proposes to develop an interactive mechanism for the two systems,with administrative divisions focusing on local administration and social governance,and main functional areas focusing on strength complementation and differentiated development.In addition,it puts forward a new county-level spatial governance model featuring a coupling relationship of administrative and functional systems that is well matched with the coordination mechanism.It may provide a reference for improving administrative divisions,the main functional area policy system,and their dynamic adjustments.

Theory and measurement model of administrative region potential from a perspective of administrative division adjustment:Taking Chongqing city as a case study

There is a lack of basic theory and method to examine the effect of administrative division(AD) adjustment on the regional development. Based on the theory and practice of Chinese AD adjustments, the paper defined the concept of administrative region potential(ARP) and developed the quantitative model to measure the ARP. Then, the model was validated taking Chongqing as an empirical case. The results show that:(1) the ARP consists of energy of position(i.e., geographic space factors) and gravitational potential energy(i.e., administrative levels and management system factors). Administrative division adjustment can change the ARP, thereby changing its path and driving force of regional development.(2) The ARP model of Chongqing city can reflect the effects of administrative division adjustment events on the Chongqing city objectively. Specifically, ARP includes variables of land jurisdiction, human capital level, fixed assets investment capacity, administrative hierarchy of fiscal decentralization and administrative decentralization.(3) The ARP promotion has significant positive influence on the performance of local economic development in Chongqing city.(4) Reasonable AD adjustments will help the region integrate production elements and resources, enhance the political power of the city, improve its ARP, and then promote local economic development. The ARP model is proved to be an efficient way to understand and explain the regional effect of AD adjustment. It provides a new analytical perspective for the planning of AD adjustment in various regions, and can also be used as a practical method for assessing the effects of AD adjustment.

Quantitative measurement of the effects of administrative division adjustments on regional development

Administrative divisions are the important foundation of national governance and social development,and the adjustment of administrative divisions is a critical way to promote regional coordinated development.Under the background of globalization and regionalization,timely adjustment of administrative divisions is a major step to reconstruct the regional development pattern.In the perspective of regional coordinated development,this paper constructs an Administrative Rank Potential Energy(ARPE)model to explore the mechanisms of administrative division adjustment(ADA)under coordinated regional development based on the theory of regional interaction,spatial field energy model and power exponential function.The results show that:(1)The development potential and influence of an administrative region are closely related to the administrative jurisdiction,administrative resources,and the potential of regional coordinated development.(2)The growth rate of ARPE in the study area from 2010 to 2015 was 20.7% compared to the period 2005 to 2010,and the potential for coordinated development increased to 3.05% from 0.21% before the"cancelling"the prefecture-level city of Chaohu.(3)The measurement results of the usefulness of ADA can not only distinguish the complex impacts brought about by social development,but also accord with real social and economic development conditions.The ARPE focuses on the both regional integrated development and individual development,thereby serving as a reference for explaining and evaluating adjustments to administrative divisions at the macro-and micro-scales.

Administrative Division Adjustment and Housing Price Comovement:Evidence from City-County Mergers in China

Interregional housing price comovement is a stylized fact worldwide.This study explores how it is affected by administrative division adjustment.We exploit city-county mergers in China as a quasi-natural experiment to construct a difference-in-differences strategy for causal identification.Based on monthly housing price data for districts(counties)in China from 2010 to 2019,we find that city-county mergers significantly improve correlations in housing prices between the merged county and the urban district.This effect is more obvious in cities with a large economic gap between merged counties and urban districts,located in the central and western regions,and with lower administrative hierarchies(non-provincial-capital cities).The mechanism test shows that the impact of city-county mergers on housing price comovement results mainly from integrating housing demand rather than integrating housing supply,like the unified land supply policy that local government implements in the new administrative scope after mergers.The results are helpful in understanding housing price comovement from the view of regional integration and provide clear policy implications for housing market regulation in China.

Administrative division adjustments and stock price comovement:Evidence from the city–county mergers in China

Under the background of Chinese market segmentation,whether governmentled administrative division adjustments can promote regional economic integration is a practical issue.Taking interregional firms’stock price comovement as a micro measurement of regional integration,this paper investigates the regional integration effect of administrative division adjustments,i.e.,city–county mergers.We find that stock price comovement between county-level and municipal district-level firms in the merged counties and municipal districts significantly improve after city–county mergers,particularly in regions with a higher degree of market segmentation and lower degree of marketization.We further find that the increase in stock price comovement caused by city–county mergers emerges from the increase in comovement of real activities between firms in the merged counties and municipal districts.Taken together,our results suggest that government-led administrative division adjustments effectively promote regional integration.

Stages and Characteristics of Metropolitan Administrative Division Adjustment in China Since 1997

Administrative division adjustments(hereinafter referred to as ADA) proceed throughout China's rapid urbanization, especially during the process of metropolitanization. It has become an integral part of the transformation of China's urban and regional governance. Based on an analysis of ADA cases at the metropolitan level since 1997, this paper suggests that the stages and characteristics of ADA in China are closely related to the metropolitanization process. The internal dynamics and external constraints jointly created two stages of ADA at the metropolitan level in China, namely, a first stage from 1997 to 2007 and a second stage from 2008 to now. In the first stage, ADA primarily aimed at turning counties into districts, to meet the metropolis' demands for expansion. In the second stage, local governments laid equal stress on the two approaches of ADA, i.e., turning counties into districts and district restructuring. Such a change corresponded to the diversification of development demands of the metropolitan area. The evolution of ADA from the first stage to the second not only reflects the changing characteristics of metropolitanization at different times, but also demonstrates the viability of ADA as a means to improve the governance structure of the metropolitan area. ADA at the metropolitan level in China since 1997 basically accommodates the development of space and governance in the metropolitan area, which promotes the rapid development of a large metropolitan area.

Study on administrative division reform of China’s small and medium-sized cities in the urbanization process

Throughout the world,urbanization has been basically understood to refer to the process of increasing population flow from rural to urban areas.To adapt to this irreversible process,besides eradicating the urban-rural dual household system,China needs to accelerate the building of administrative system in small and medium-sized cities,which will enable them to absorb more migrants from rural areas,and thereby help ease the burden on large cities,and forge a sensible urban system.According to the statistics in this paper,by 2050,China’s urbanization rate will reach around 80%.This calls for as many as 1,050 small and medium-sized cities,i.e.,those capable of accommodating less than 500,000 residents.Currently,however,there are only 383 cities of that scale in China.Therefore,we need to think hard and clearly about how counties and towns are best developed under the urbanization drive,how to achieve optimal administrative structure through reclassification and adjustment of different administrative units,and how,in general,to enhance the quality of urbanization in China.

国家行政区划调整下的城市多中心发展——城市空间转型的政策启示

Polycentric urban development has profound impacts on urban development worldwide.Most studies have identified its complex drivers of social economy and natural condition while ignoring the state-led policy factors.In recent years,China has undergone dramatic administrative division adjustment(ADA)during the process of unique state-led urbanization.However,as a crucial government strategy,the impacts of ADA on urban polycentricity remain unclear.This research investigates the relationship between ADA and urban polycentricity through spatial difference-in-differences models.The results reveal that ADA has contributed to the polycentric urban development in China.Specifically,boundary restructuring has more substantial impacts than hierarchy reorganization.In addition,ADA has significantly promoted urban polycentricity in local cities in central China and neighbouring cities in eastern China,while it has no significant effects in western China.Furthermore,ADA reshapes urban polycentricity mainly by the influencing mechanism of construction land and industrial structure.Policymakers should consider the various ADA’s impacts on urban polycentricity with socio-economic conditions.This research provides a deeper insight into urban spatial transformation with state-led drivers.