Identifying The Drivers of Urbanization

To date, many geography studies have identified GDP, population, FDI, and transportation factors as key drivers of urban growth in China. The political science literature has demonstrated that China’s urban growth is also driven by powerful economic and fiscal incentives for local governments, as well as by the political incentives of local leaders who control land use in their jurisdictions. These parallel but distinct research traditions limit a comprehensive understanding that can result in partial and potentially misleading conclusions of urbanization in China. This paper presents a spatially explicit study that incorporates both political science and geographic perspectives to understand the relative importance of hierarchal administrative governments in affecting urban growth. We use multi-level modeling approach to examine how socio-economic and policy factors – represented here by fiscal transfers – at different administrative levels affect growth in “urban hotspot counties” across three time periods (1995–2000, 2000–2005, and 2005–2008). Our results show that counties that are more dependent on fiscal transfers from the central government convert less cultivated land to urban use, controlling for other factors. We also find that local governments are becoming more powerful in shaping urban land development as a result of local economic, fiscal, and political incentives, as well as through the practical management and control of capital, land, and human resources. By incorporating fiscal transfers in our analysis, our study examines a factor in the urban development of China that had previously been neglected and provides an improved understanding of the underlying processes and pathways involved in urban growth in China.

China has undergone large-scale urban expansion and rapid loss of cultivated land for more than two decades. The goal of this paper is to examine the relative importance of socioeconomic and policy factors across different administrative levels on urban expansion and associated cultivated land conversion. We conduct the analysis for urban hotspot counties across the entire country. We use multi-level modeling techniques to examine how socioeconomic and policy factors at different administrative levels affect cultivated land conversion across three time periods, 1989–1995, 1995–2000, and 2000–2005. Our results show that at the county level, both urban land rent and urban wages contribute to total cultivated land conversion. Contrary to expectations, agricultural investment drives farmland conversion, suggesting a policy failure with unintended consequences. At the provincial level, urban wages and foreign direct investment both positively contribute to cultivated land conversion. We also find that higher GDP correlates with more urban expansion but the relationship is nonlinear.

This paper uses a content analysis of the published literature to take stock of current understanding of key social and policy drivers of migration to cities in 11 Asian and African mega-deltas and identifies commonalities and differences among them. The analysis shows that migration to urban centers in mega-deltas is an outcome of many forces: economic policies and incentives, local and destination institutions, government policies to develop small towns, and the geographic concentration of investments. Massive influx of capital to many deltas has transformed the local economic base from a primarily agricultural one to a manufacturing and processing economy. This has created uneven spatial economic development which is the underlying driver of migration to cities in the mega-deltas regardless of geographic context or size. Going forward to 2060, one critical challenge for all the deltas is to increase the labor skill of their workforce and foster technology innovation. Continued economic growth in these regions will require substantial investments in education and capacity building and the ability of urban centers to absorb the migrant labor pool.

What determines urban growth and how do these factors vary globally? An understanding of the factors that drive urban spatial form will be critical for urban—and ultimately environmental—sustainability. We hypothesize that easy access to economic or social activity is a primary driver of urban form. From this, a city’s spatial form is largely determined by the time–cost of access to transportation and activities. We use a stochastic pixel-based model to test the hypothesis of accessibility-driven urban growth using two case studies: Silicon Valley, U.S., and Bangalore, India. This study is the first to develop a spatially explicit modeling approach to urban growth in a comparative framework spanning the developed and developing world. Our analysis shows that Silicon Valley’s relatively inexpensive auto-based transport (in time and financial costs), dispersed employment locations, and high labor force participation rates have resulted in intermittent and expansive highway-oriented urban growth patterns. In contrast, Bangalore’s expensive non-auto transport (in time and financial costs), low participation in the formal economy, and emphasis on informal economic activity has produced a tighter clustering of urban development near existing urban locations. Over time, generally decreasing transport costs in both locations have led to increased dispersion of urban development. Economic growth in India and the inflows of IT-related foreign investment in Bangalore may further create urban forms increasingly similar to those found in the Silicon Valley. The results have important implications for the development of policies that may lead to more sustainable forms of urban development.

The majority of studies on Chinese urbanization have been focused on coastal areas, with little attention given to urban centers in the west. Western provinces, however, will unquestionably undergo significant urban change in the future as a result of the ‘Go West’ policy initiated in the 1990s. In this paper the authors examine the relationship between drivers of urban growth and land-use outcomes in Chengdu, capital of the western province of Sichuan, China. In the first part of this research, remotely sensed data are used to map changes in land cover in the greater Chengdu area and to investigate the spatial distribution of development with use of landscape metrics along seven urban-to-rural transects identified as key corridors of growth. Results indicate that the urbanized area increased by more than 350% between 1978 and 2002 in three distinct spatial trends: (a) near the urban fringe in all directions prior to 1990, (b) along transportation corridors, ring roads, and near satellite cities after 1990, and, finally, (c) infilling in southern and western areas (connecting satellite cities to the urban core) in the late 1990s. In the second part of this paper the authors connect patterns of growth with economic, land, and housing market reforms, which are explored in the context of urban planning initiatives. The results reveal that, physically, Chengdu is following trends witnessed in coastal cities of China, although the importance of various land-use drivers differs from that in the east (for example, in the low level of foreign direct investment to date). The information provided by the land-use analysis ultimately helped tailor policies and plans for better land management and reduced fragmentation of new development in the municipality.