Type division and spatial differentiation characteristics of cities in China: on the perspective of sustainable urban regeneration

ABSTRACT

Sustainable urban regeneration is an inevitable requirement for promoting high-quality urban development in developing countries. Affected by different natural conditions, cultural background, economic development and other aspects, different cities have different goals and ways of implementing sustainable urban regeneration. Considering that cities in developing countries generally face the problems of overpopulation, financial constraints and urban sprawl, the urgency of classifying and guiding different cities to carry out sustainable urban regeneration in an orderly manner has become increasingly prominent. Therefore, taking China as an example, this study puts forward a city type division method from the perspective of sustainable urban regeneration, taking ‘county-level administrative division’ as the basic unit, divides cities into five types, and analyzes their spatial differentiation characteristics further. The results show that: (1) there are significant regional differences in the content and characteristics of urban regeneration in China, which are consistent with the distribution characteristics of the ‘Hu line’; (2) There is a mismatch between ‘administrative planning objectives’ and ‘urban development status’ in some cities in the northeast and central and western regions; (3) There are significant differences in the basis for coordinating urban regeneration especially among different economic sectors, provinces and urban clusters, and the orientation of urban regeneration policies in some cities needs to be adjusted and optimized. The results provide scientific reference and feasible ideas for China and other developing countries to formulate sustainable urban regeneration policies and promote sustainable and coordinated urban development.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable urban regeneration
• county-level administrative divisions
• category hierarchy
• type division
• spatial differentiation

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China [grant number 2022YFC3800303]; the Seed Foundation of Tianjin University [grant number 2023XS-0153].

Disclosure statement

We declare that we have no financial and personal relationship with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript entitled.

Author contributions

Jin ZUO: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing, Review & Editing. Xingyu HUANG: Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing, Visualization, Review & Editing. Jiahui FAN: Data curation, Review & Editing. Chen LI: Review & Editing. Jiancheng LUO: Methodology, Review & Editing.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China [2022YFC3800303].