Orginal Article
WANG Zhenbo,FANG Chuanglin,HU Ruishan
Great changes have taken place in China's urban scale system during the last 30 years. The driving forces that cannot be ignored include following factors: the population urbanization propelled by its aggregation, the land urbanization driven by its revenue, and the economic urbanization promoted by GDP. Using the analytical tools of GIS integrating three factors of resident population, built-up area and economic output, we constructed Zipf-PLE model for a in-depth research on the spatial pattern of China's urban scale system. The result shows that: (1) in 2010, China's urban scale system is matured with completed levels of hierarchy, which is reflected by a relatively rational pyramid-shaped pattern with larger scale locates in the middle while smaller scale stays at the bottom. The urban scale system structure in the western region has the highest rationality, which presents a pyramid-shaped pattern with larger scale at the bottom and smaller scale at the top. The urban scale system structure in the eastern regions is relatively sound and contains the largest quantity of medium-sized cities, indicating a pyramid-shaped pattern with larger scale in the middle and smaller scale at both ends. The urban scale system structure in the central regions is featured by its incomplete urban system hierarchy, which lacks megacities especially, and presents a pattern with larger scale in both the middle and the bottom, while having smaller scale at the top. (2) The overall urban scale system in China at the provincial level is rational, with 90.32% of the provinces being moderately rational. Among all 27 provinces, except 4 municipalities, the urban scale system patterns of 8 provinces are inclined to disperse and the other 19 tend to concentrate. (3) Furthermore, we allocate the provincial urban scale systems in China into different categories according to their rationality rankings, which are: the high-level (with 11 provinces and municipalities including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, Guangxi, Gansu, Fujian and Jilin), the relatively high-level (with 12 provinces of Guangdong, Shanxi, Yunnan, Hunan, Guizhou, Liaoning, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Hebei and Henan), the medium-level (provinces of Hubei, Shandong and Anhui), the low-level (provinces of Hainan, Mongolia and Ningxia), and the irrational areas (provinces of Qinghai and Tibet).