Regional Integration by Administrative Division Adjustment: City–County Consolidation and Layout of Land Development in China
Publication: Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 149, Issue 3
Abstract
Conventional studies suggest that administrative division adjustment (ADA) is an effective way to facilitate domestic regional integration, but the process and mechanisms of regional integration led by a top-down ADA have not been fully investigated. Using a data set including millions of land transactions and manually coded city–county consolidation records in China, this paper documents that the layout of land development moves closer to the city center after city–county consolidation. In comparison with industrial and commercial land, residential land is more sensitive and generates approaches to city center in the short term. Only after the formation of population agglomeration over a long period does layout change occur for commercial land. This dynamic process shows that regional integration featuring resource layout is more easily achieved through state-manipulated resource allocation, while integration that features economic activities requires a longer-term shift of population. We test two mechanisms, namely, county push factors and urban district pull factors, and we find that the county push factors are more likely to be the reason for layout change.
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Acknowledgments
Funding was received from the National Social Science Major Foundation of China (15ZDA024).
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Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 149 • Issue 3 • September 2023
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© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Sep 22, 2022
Accepted: Feb 27, 2023
Published online: Apr 24, 2023
Published in print: Sep 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Sep 24, 2023
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