Economic Restructuring and Suburbanization in China

Abstract

As in other countries, suburbanization in China occurred after the cities had experienced a period of sustained industrial and population growth. This study examines suburbanization in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, and Dalian. As a result of economic restructuring, the urban core registered net population loss from 1982 to 1990 because of decentralization while the inner suburbs gained population. Among the forces driving suburbanization were marketization of urban land, the shift of industrial land to tertiary use, transportation improvement, the availability of foreign and domestic capital, housing rehabilitation in the city, and new housing construction in the suburbs. There were certain similarities but major differences between American and Chinese suburbanization. Unlike the current metropolitan landscape in the United States where suburban growth has given rise to a polycentric spatial structure, suburbanization in China is still at the incipient stage of development with suburbs dominated by central cities. The role of the state in China has been more direct and powerful in setting the suburbanization process in motion. [

The spatial distribution of industries in transitional China: A study of Beijing

“…This suggests a decentralized and dispersed location pattern amongst most manufacturing sectors in Beijing. This finding is in accordance with other decentralization studies in Chinese cities (Zhou & Ma, 2000). Factors like large land supply, low land prices, and improved transportation could account for this industrial decentralization pattern.…”

“…This implies that manufacturing enterprises do not escape as far away from the city center as might be possible, even if the decentralization of manufacturing is a clear trend in Beijing (Zhou & Ma, 2000). As Table 3 shows, raw material processing industries such as the stone, clay, and glass products sector tend to locate far away from city center and light industries such as the crafts sector and the pens, pencils, and sporting goods sector are the opposite.…”

“…Some of the hottest topics addressed by scholars in recent years include suburbanization, the development of commercial and housing markets, land expansion and urban sprawl, and social and spatial structure change (Ding, 2004;Feng et al, 2008;Li, 2000;Wong & Zhao, 1999;Wu & Phelps, 2011;Zhou & Ma, 2000). Relatively fewer studies have focused on industrial development and its spatial arrangement (Gao et al;2014;Liu et al, 2013;Ren & Sun, 2012), and these studies draw their conclusions mainly from case studies and are often focused on one single sector.…”

“…Current studies of Beijing's urban spatial structure tend to focus on issues of suburbanization, population densities, and housing and land prices (Ding, 2004;Li, 2000;Zhou & Ma, 2000). Far fewer studies, however, have attempted to shed light on the locations of industrial sector activities (Liu, Han, & O'Connor, 2013;Ren & Sun, 2012), an omission which is probably due to the lack of precise location data for firms.…”

“…Moreover, although most service sectors appear to be expanding toward the periphery, the mass media industries such as newspaper and broadcasting and mass consumption industries such as retail, hotels, and restaurants were found to tend to expand towards the city center. This city-ward expansion and clustering of mass consumption industries and the public sector (for instance, social services and postal services) within the Third Ring Road does not, strangely, reflect the suburbanization of population in Beijing (Feng et al, 2008;Zhou & Ma, 2000).…”