New Evolutionary Features of the Urban Scale Distribution in China: Based on the Seventh Census Data

Abstract

Urbanization has drastically altered the population structure of China. While existing quantitative analyses of urban scale evolution provide reference and basis for optimizing urban systems, our study goes further by enriching knowledge and insights in this field through empirical investigation of the latest census data. We explore the evolution of distribution from 2000, 2010 to 2020, utilizing Zipf 's law, Gini coefficient and a designed scale growth index. We find that the Zipf index fell from 0.850 in 2000, 0.913 in 2010, to 0.949 in 2020, revealing a growing trend of agglomeration, but excluding top-tier cities such as Shanghai and Beijing in the latter decade. After 2010, large cities and big cities located at the forefront are the main drivers of agglomeration, and the difference in scale increment of Tier-1 big cities has expanded significantly. Capital cities of the central and western regions became new important migration destinations. Chongqing and Chengdu, Beijing and Shanghai have the largest difference in their scale growth index, representing the two evolution models of nearby urbanization and remote urbanization respectively. To achieve a higher quality of new-type urbanization in the future, it is essential to coordinate the simultaneous promotion of both remote and nearby urbanization patterns.