The "Space Power" of Urban Development: Taking Beijing as an Example

As Internet communications technology development and improvement of modern means of transport, the city, urban and regional interaction and relationship between gradually strengthened, modern society has formed a huge space of flows, formed the current Chinese hierarchy of the urban space network.


In this complex network, the nature of the urban development depends on the spatial distribution of all kinds of power: the more concentrated the power of the city, the stronger the space production capacity.Some cities are so has the stronger adsorption ability of resources, a wider scope of radiation, the greater ability of sustainable development.These cities is what we call the node or center city.Therefore, urban development is a dynamic process of evolution in the network space production.This paper tries to from the perspectives of economic geography development mechanism of urban China.


"Space power" come from?


First of all, the political status will influence the urban space powers.As is known to all, Chinese cities have the corresponding administrative levels, from the capital/special administrative region, and municipality directly under the central government, the deputy provincial city, general provincial capital, prefecture level, political power and administrative level decreasing, a strict system of city level.In general, the higher the political status of the city, the greater the power, the more likely to get resources for urban development.


Moreover, the economic structure and financial structure in the same position of the influence urban space power.In the era of service industry, the economic center into a pattern of layers of control, economic center at the next higher level for the next level economic center has a strong grip.The gathering place of the headquarters, the more easy to form scale economy, and driving the development of high-end services.And if the city has a important financial institutions, such as stock exchange, the big Banks, etc., will improve the urban space power.


Again, also nots allow to ignore to the historical and cultural factors.Historical factors is often a "soft power", it is invisible, but can not be ignored.Such as Shanghai Shanghai style culture and inclusive;Chengdu and guangzhou in the center of the form in the history of the southwest and south China region, the historical factors can also help to the development of the city today.


The cultural factors is more complex, it can be a kind of traditional, zheshang culture, for example, modern became the most developed private economy in zhejiang province, hangzhou innovation atmosphere thick and zheshang culture.Another and cultural education of science strength, institutions of higher learning institutions, especially the "985", "211" university city, have a stronger appeal to the student culture power is big, for the urban development potential talent pool.


Finally, a special institutional arrangement is also very important dimension of city power.Under normal circumstances, the system is fixed, but in order to attract investment, promote the development of cities, the government may provide capital space production all sorts of convenient conditions or preferential policies.For example, the capitalist system in Hong Kong under "one country, two systems".In shenzhen and other places to set up special economic zones, and later the pudong new area and binhai new area, the current Shanghai free trade zone.


The "flow" in the process of urban development


Political factors, economic factors, historical and cultural factors and policy factors jointly shape the space of the city power, the power to "flow" between cities."Flow" is an abstract concept, can from the following three angles to understand:


The first is the labor and personnel flow.Who is the most important resource of urban development.No matter the common labor or high-end talent is necessary urban development.Can attract more Labour and talent into the city, more development opportunities, talent accumulation effect is more obvious.


The second is capital flows.Financial capital is "sticky" and never randomly distributed, but with a strong regional preference, the formation of financial center at all levels is the financial capital is highly differentiated a map.Investment in the field of communication systems and the Internet, the big bang makes the number of working capital increase significantly.Financial center like a vacuum cleaner to absorb space scattered on the money.Compared with the past, today's financial center stronger absorption ability, can learn from financial resource distribution among the countries.


The last is the flow of information.Information is divided into symmetric and asymmetric information.Asymmetric information refers to information can be got through public channel, the information flow in space is homogeneous;Asymmetric information, that is, not standardized information.Thrift, points out that the standardization of information transmission and access to discriminatory and increasing marginal cost, to the value of accurate information about the use of non-standard, the best thing to do is as close as possible to the source.Power concentrated in the city, in general, often is the origin of asymmetric information and diffusion, enjoy more mobility of such information.


"Power" in the development of Beijing city


Through the above analysis of the power and power forms, look at China's largest power - Beijing development pattern.


Historically, in the era of industrialization, the natural geographical conditions and the location of Beijing is very general, but Beijing's GDP from 1949 years ago, ten away quickly rise to second place in the country.In fact, has a strong political influence in the development, such as building in Beijing as the center of the rail network, the headquarters of many Banks and moved to Beijing university resources.That is to say, Beijing is in the development of the planned economy period, is the product of national support, is essentially a variety of the concentration of power, but the accumulation of these advantages has become the current Beijing construction the foundation of the world city.


With the market economy development, the center of Beijing power advantage magnified by the market, become the highest point of the hierarchical network city in China.It is all kinds of trimming the headquarters to gather, with 52 headquarters of the fortune 500, nearly 100 China top 500 enterprises, is home to the highest institution of higher learning at Peking University Tsinghua university, and have a comprehensive scientific research institutions and the state council development research center of Chinese Academy of sciences and other state-level think-tanks.


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