Recent Development and Evolution of Metropolitan Areas in China: Based on the Data of National Population Census
Metropolitan area is an important geographical space of Chinese urbanization, and the basic spatial form to promote the development of urban agglomeration and new urbanization. On the basis of previous studies which was based on the fifth national population census and the sixth national population census, the study uses da-ta of the seventh national population census, adopts indicators such as urbanization rate, population density and population number, selects the rank-size rule and primacy index to identify the spatial scope and analyzes recent development as well as evolution characteristics of Chinese metropolitan area. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Overall, there are 174 metropolitan areas with a total population of 580 million in 2020. Compared to 2000 and 2010 , the number of metropolitan areas respectively increased by 57 and 46 and the population respectively in-creased by 381 million and 261 million. (2) In terms of size, the number of metropolitan areas of different sizes has gradually changed from the pyramid structure to olive structure, but the inverted pyramid structure of its popula-tion has gradually apparent during the study period. The primary distribution of metropolitan areas isn 't obvious, which is more in line with the rank-size distribution. (3) From the perspective of spatial distribution characteris-tics, the spatial gradient pattern of the metropolitan area with more east and less west is basically stable during the study period. And the spatial distribution of metropolitan areas gradually shows a pattern of"two horizontal and three vertical axes". Metropolitan area basically included in the spatial scope of agglomeration planning.
metropolitan areasnew urbanizationrange identificationsize structurespatial distribution
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
