中国城市行政地域与实体地域的空间差异及优化整合

中国的城市界定与行政区划紧密关联。根据2010年人口普查数据,系统分析不同尺度城市行政地域与城市实体地域的界定及其空间差异。主要结论：① 按照直辖市或地级市、设区的市和不设区的市、设街道的市和不设街道的市的层级,城市行政地域范围依次收缩,但是都大于城市实体地域范围。按照实体地域界定,2010年中国城市人口仅占30.18%。② 城市实体地域更能客观地反映城市位序规模的分布状态,而按照城市行政地域会导致规模或排序偏差。③ 未来在行政区划调整时,着重考虑撤县设市、增设地级市、确立乡级行政区划调整标准等,在建立城市实体地域时,可从独立市辖区、县城、特大镇等方面优化,并加强统计信息公开。

City administrative area and physical area in China: Spatial differences and integration strategies

The definition of city is connected to administrative division system in China. It is important to understand the spatial difference between city administrative area and city physical area. According to the population census data in 2010, we distinguished city definitions in multiple administrative levels, including municipality cities, prefectural cities, cities with districts, cities without districts, cities with sub-districts and cities without sub-districts. In addition, we compared the spatial areas between city administrative cities and physical cities area and put forward some integration strategies. The main results are listed as follows. (1) Among various administrative cities, municipality cities and prefectural cities were larger. The following ones were cities with districts and cities without districts. The areas of cities with sub-districts and cities without sub-districts were relatively small. City physical area reflected the real landscape of a city, which was smaller than all kinds of city administrative areas. It only covered 0.32% of the whole area in the mainland of China but had 30.18% of Chinese population in 2010. (2) To classify city scale hierarchies, the population in city physical area was a better measure than the population in city administrative area. According to the population in the physical area, Shanghai is the largest city in China in 2010. (3) China's city physical area definition was also affected by city administrative definition. We suggested China's city administrative division adjustment should concerns more on county-to-city conversion and new prefectural-city establishment. It is better to regard the population city physical area as a reference index for administrative division adjustment. For the definition of the city physical area, independent municipal district, county seat and large towns were suggested as the independent city physical area. Besides, we recommended to open the statistical data related to city physical area. We do hope our research can be beneficial for policy implications for China's administrative adjustment and city physical area studies.