Since the reform and opening up, urbanization in China has rapidly risen from less than 20% to over 60%. The number and scale of cities has also changed dramatically. It is clearly stated in the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee’s proposals for formulating the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 that a new type of urbanization with people as the core should be advanced, and coordinated development between metropolitan areas, medium and small cities needs to be fostered, which creates a direct a pathway for the high-quality development of urbanization in China.

Above all, the laws which cities of different sizes use to scale growth need to be rationally standardized. From the perspective of motives for urban growth, the rate at which cities grow often depends on their environments for macroeconomic development. In general, in the process of urbanization, cities with different scales and status grow at similar rates as the local region’s population grows, but there are still disparities among them. The different rates of scaled urban growth mainly stem from discrepancies among cities’ individual attributes. Human-centered cities which care about people’s actual needs and help citizens improve their quality of life are favored by capital, technology, labor, and other factors of production. Decisive factors in city development are now transforming from economic positions and low-cost advantages to a better living environment, higher life quality, and even the cultivation of an urban ethos. This has been seen in the historical course of urbanization worldwide. For example, the rise of San Francisco and the fall of Detroit are archetypes of this phenomenon. Los Angeles, although in the same state as San Francisco, grows at a divergent pace due to the different urban ethos.

Over the 40+ years since the reform and opening up, central cities and city clusters are becoming the chief spatial forms which carry factors of urban development in China. Metropolitan circles, which have a spatial dimension between central cities and city clusters, also grow rapidly. Coupled with this physical growth is the nearly 10% annual growth rate of the Chinese economy, and the transfer of hundreds of millions of surplus laborers from rural areas to cities. This convergence makes China’s urbanization process the world’s fastest and largest in scale. Since the scale of cities has a direct relationship with the land use scale, standards for equipping infrastructure and public service facilities, and as tax-sharing reforms give local governments great incentive to pursue scaled urban growth, many cities have expanded their sizes within a short period of time.

However, this tax-incentive competition places an over-emphasis on the economy and population numbers, with an insufficient focus on people’s needs. As a consequence, some big cities are exceedingly ambitious in their sizes, and small cities lack distinctive features. Coordination in development among large, medium-sized, and small cities is not integrated enough.

The coastal regions in east China develop with higher economic levels, more convenient transportation, sound business environments and better living quality, with relatively balanced development levels among cities of different sizes. Yet, the economic bearing capacities of central, western, and northeastern regions diverge greatly. Within regions with more bearing capacity and advantageous positions, several super-cities have emerged, which have gradually become central cities in their local provinces, or within the whole country. Together with peripheral cities, they continue developing in an increasingly coordinated way, gradually transiting into metropolitan circles and city clusters. In contrast, those central, western, and northeastern regions which are confined by ecological and other developing conditions, especially regions outside central cities and city clusters, have limited development potential in terms of city size, and even face obvious urban shrinking.

China’s quantity-oriented demographic dividend has now transferred into a quality-oriented one. In this context, city development dominated by scaling growth is difficult to sustain. Under the guidance of the government’s new development proposals, regional disparity in development levels between different sized cities should be placed at a high premium, and coordination needs to be fostered.

To achieve this, advantages of different sized cities should be fully utilized to determine the targeted scale of urban population, in a rational way. It is also necessary to let central cities and city clusters play a leading role. Apart from very small number of super-cities, the household registration threshold should be comprehensively lowered. These cities’ spatial patterns, in which inhabiting populations need to be optimized, should be moderately controlled in terms of population density and scale within main downtown areas. It is also advisable to release the growing potential of cities’ peripheral zones, especially in new cities. For developed zones in east China, integrated development should be fostered in industrial, transportation, and public service sectors, and ecological protection should be prioritized to promote the population’s orderly and easy flow into metropolitan circles and city clusters. For zones with underdeveloped economies in central, western, and northeastern China, the population’s free migration (within provincial regions) should be encouraged. Meanwhile, it is important to utilize the expansive role of central cities, and stimulate the growth of peripheral cities to further improve urbanization rates and gradually realize common wealth in the process of the high-quality development of urbanization.

Deng Zhituan is a research fellow from the Institute of Urban and Demographic Studies at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.