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Urban Systems: Understanding and Predicting the Spatial Distribution of China's Population
Author(s) -
Li Pengfei,
Lu Ming
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
china and world economy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.815
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1749-124X
pISSN - 1671-2234
DOI - 10.1111/cwe.12380
Subject(s) - zipf's law , urbanization , china , economic geography , distribution (mathematics) , population , geography , population size , spatial distribution , divergence (linguistics) , economics , economic growth , demography , statistics , mathematical analysis , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , remote sensing , archaeology , sociology
With urbanization and population migration, some Chinese cities fall into decline whereas others prosper. Using nighttime light data, we redefine the city based on economic function and evaluate the city size distribution in representative countries. The results provide evidence not only for Zipf's law, but also for a distortion in China's current city size distribution. This study proposes a feasible method to predict urban population distribution based on the role of geographical factors in regional development, following the idea of spatial equilibrium. This prediction suggests that the divergence of city size in China tends to be pronounced, with inter‐regional income disparity being narrowed and the city size distribution following Zipf's law. The Chinese government should further relax restrictions on population inflow into large cities and prepare for more migration in the future.