Reshaping urban horizons: unraveling urban spatial expansion through development zone site selection

Abstract

Urban spatial structures significantly influence the quality of production, living, and ecological spaces within cities. Development zones serve as essential spatial carriers in China’s rapid industrialization and urbanization, facilitating horizontal urban expansion. This study examines the impact of development zone site selection on urban space expansion through both theoretical analysis and empirical evidence. Results reveal that the dispersion of development zones leads to urban geometry loosening. Potential mechanisms, such as land expansion, are closely linked to various heterogeneous factors like official turnover and city size. With the establishment of development zones, there is an increase in the intensity of industrial and commercial/residential land transfers within a 5-km radius, confirming that the industrial suburbanization and passive residential suburbanization catalyzed by the development zones are the primary drivers of horizontal urban space expansion. Additionally, dispersion fosters competition for homogenization among industrial parks in the same administrative area. To promote organized and effective urbanization, strategies should prioritize compact development, strengthen boundary regulations, reform institutional land development practices, and optimize industrial resource integration within the city’s existing parks.

Keywords:

• Development zone site selection
• urban geometry
• construction land
• homogeneous competition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Data Source: The data originates from the ‘World Investment Report 2019’ issued by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

2 Data Source: We calculated the data based on the ‘China Development Zone Audit and Announcement Catalog’ (2018 edition).

3 It is important to note that, unlike indicators representing the vertical development level of the city’s internal spatial structure, the urban geometry indicators we have selected solely focus on depicting the differences in compactness along the horizontal axis of the actual urban area of the city. Therefore, our assumption is that the city is flat.

4 See subsection 3.2 Variable selection and processing for definition and processing details.

5 Given the challenges in obtaining precise boundary information for development zones, we use the geographical locations of the development zone management committees as a substitute.

6 City-County Mergers (CCM) is an important policy tool for administrative division adjustments led by the central government. It mainly involves administrative reforms where prefecture-level cities incorporate surrounding counties or counties under their administration into the jurisdiction of the central urban area. The purpose of CCM is to address the constraints on the development space of central urban areas due to the advancement of urbanization. It serves as a primary means for the government to expand urban scale and optimize resource integration.

7 It should be noted that the test interval spans from 2007 to 2018 due to the significant lack of data on land transfers of industrial land before 2006 and the objective limitations of the data.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 22&ZD066) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72303026).