The Developmental Pattern of Urban Agglomerations in China

Haoxi Lin1,2*, Jinchuan Huang1,2, Yunqian Chen3

1Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Re-sources Research, CAS, Beijing, 100101, China

2College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

3Beijing National Day School, Beijing, 100039, China

Abstract: Following the logic of development and evolution, this study identifies the developmental pattern of urban agglomeration based on metropolitan area as basic component and county-level administrative divi-sion as basic analysis unit in virtue of socio-economic indexes. The overall evolutionary series of urban ag-glomeration was formulated by 156 metropolitan areas, 25 joint metropolitan area, 3 quasi metropolitan interlocking regions and 3 metropolitan interlocking regions.

Keywords: Urban agglomeration; Growth area; Metropolitan area; Joint metropolitan area; Metropolitan interlocking region