Do planned HSRNTs lead to suburbanization in China? Different manifestation of asynchronism

Keywords: High Speed Railway New Town, Population growth, urban sprawl, Geographically Weighted Regression, China
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In the first two decades of the 21st century, China has constructed over 30000 km High Speed Railways (HSR). More than edges and nodes, HSR construction also substantially stimulated urban land expansion and urban population nationwide. More than node and edge, the HSR station areas in most Chinese cities become new urbanization center. This paper examines the land urbanization and population urbanization process in the HSR station based new towns of China from 2000 to 2017. With principal component analysis and geographically weighted regression model, the paper discusses mismatches of land and population urbanization on three scales: 1) On metropolitan level, the construction of HSR accelerated suburbanization process, but lacking abundant supporting facilities in HSR new towns (HSRNT) leads to the mismatches between land and population urbanization; 2) On the regional level, constraints of economic development and physical geographical conditions resulted in gaps in HSR design, where inter-regional mismatches between two urbanization process could be established; 3) On the national level, plans of HSR construction brought about population growth in HSRNTs, but the gap between the demand of residents in population urbanization and government’s supply in land urbanization still exists. For the sustainable development of HSRNTs, we suggested urban transport policy paying more attention to the mismatches on three scales, and more valid influence of HSRNT to urbanization process could be proved for a longer time scale.