Search

The aim of this paper is to explore whether and how urban road transport (URT) development affects haze pollution. One of the innovations of this paper is that URT development is measured by road accessibility with novel digital elevation model datasets, which have been used by few scholars. The endogenous problem caused by revere causality issue in the relationship between URT development and haze pollution is also considered. Based on the panel data of prefecture-level cities of Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region in China from 2011 to 2018, this paper uses long-lagged values of URT development as the instrumental variable, employing the two-stage least squares (2SLS) method. The study shows that URT development leads to an increase of haze pollution. Moreover, mechanism tests based on moderating and mediating models support the finding that decreasing haze pollution resulted from better connection effects, while rising agglomeration effects tend to bring about increasing haze pollution, and the latter effect is larger in magnitude than the former. Current URT development may have long-term negative consequences for livability of YRD cities, and urban decision makers should reconsider the effectiveness of the current road transport investment and construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing with cities, rural communities especially those declining rural communities have become vulnerable to natural disasters owing to their backward socioeconomic conditions. Taking Xun County of China's Henan Province as the study area, the paper aims to evaluate rural community resilience to flood by unveiling the connection between individuals' cognition, follow-up actions and the community resilience. Research results show that: (1) The logic chain exists as individual's cognition to disaster leads to their constructive actions to cope with disaster, which contribute to community resilience. (2) At the cognition dimension, individual's knowledge reserve of disaster prevention and their recognition to local authority are playing an important role in their decision making and follow-up behaviors when disaster occurs. (3) At the action dimension, individual's familiarity with the disaster preparedness, efficient information transmission when disaster occurs and villagers' following order and their unity of action all contribute to community resilience to disaster. The paper proposes ways to improve rural community resilience to disasters based on the research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green finance (GF) is recognized as a key driver of sustainable development. While existing studies have extensively discussed the relationship between GF and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), few have explored the coupling coordination relationship between GF and SDGs. In this paper, we use data from thirty Chinese provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) from 2008–2021 to examine the degree of coupling coordination development (CCD) between GF and the SDGs systems using the CCD model. We find that most SDGs and their sub-goals exhibit a significant upward trend, except for SDG8, 14–16. GF presents a fluctuating upward trend, with a significant decline in 2010 and 2019. The CCDs between GF and SDGs and their sub-goals generally show an M-shaped upward trend in most regions, with most of them experiencing a synchronous decline in 2011–2012 and 2019. In the analysis of regional heterogeneity, the eastern region performs better in SDG8–9, the central region performs better in SDG3, 14–15, while the western region performs better in SDG7. This paper provides empirical evidence for a further in-depth understanding of the relationship between GF and SDGs, which can contribute to advancing GF development and the SDG process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is of importance to enhance the urban areas' capacity for population aggregation in underdeveloped regions, aiming to rectify the imbalanced and insufficient pattern of economic development in China. Taking the Taiyuan Metropolitan Area (TMA) in central China as a case study, this paper examines the evolutionary process and characteristics of population agglomeration from 2000 to 2020, and identifies factors associated with agglomeration and their spatial effects. The findings indicated that: 1) against the background of sustained population shrinkage in the provincial area, the TMA showed a demographic trend of steady increase, albeit with a decelerated growth rate. In the metropolitan area, urban population size continued to grow rapidly, whereas the rural areas endured sustained losses. Disparities in city size continued to widen, and the polarization of concentrated population in the core cities kept increasing. 2) Agglomerations in both secondary and service industries had significant positive effects on local population agglomeration, with the former effect being stronger. Regional economic development, government fiscal expenditure, and financial advancement all contributed to facilitating local population clustering. From a spatial spillover perspective, service agglomeration and financial development promoted population agglomeration in surrounding areas. Conversely, fiscal expenditure inhibited such agglomeration. As for industrial agglomeration and regional economic development, their spatial spillover effects were non-significant. The results obtained reveal several policy implications aimed at enhancing the population agglomeration capacity of the metropolitan area in underdeveloped regions during the new era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City cluster is an effective platform for encouraging regionally coordinated development. Coordinated reduction of carbon emissions within city cluster via the spatial association network between cities can help coordinate the regional carbon emission management, realize sustainable development, and assist China in achieving the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. This paper applies the improved gravity model and social network analysis (SNA) to the study of spatial correlation of carbon emissions in city clusters and analyzes the structural characteristics of the spatial correlation network of carbon emissions in the the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) city cluster in China and its influencing factors. The results demonstrate that: 1) the spatial association of carbon emissions in the YRD city cluster exhibits a typical and complex multi-threaded network structure. The network association number and density show an upward trend, indicating closer spatial association between cities, but their values remain generally low. Meanwhile, the network hierarchy and network efficiency show a downward trend but remain high. 2) The spatial association network of carbon emissions in the YRD city cluster shows an obvious 'core-edge' distribution pattern. The network is centered around Shanghai, Suzhou and Wuxi, all of which play the role of 'bridges', while cities such as Zhoushan, Ma'anshan, Tongling and other cities characterized by the remote location, single transportation mode or lower economic level are positioned at the edge of the network. 3) Geographic proximity, varying levels of economic development, different industrial structures, degrees of urbanization, levels of technological innovation, energy intensities and environmental regulation are important influencing factors on the spatial association of within the YRD city cluster. Finally, policy implications are provided from four aspects: government macro-control and market mechanism guidance, structural characteristics of the 'core-edge' network, reconfiguration and optimization of the spatial layout of the YRD city cluster, and the application of advanced technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the process of global urban development, there are urgent ecological security and environmental pollution problems, green development is the fundamental way for urban sustainable development, economic transformation and mitigation of ecological and environmental problems. Based on the panel data of 283 cities at prefecture level and above in China from 2003 to 2017, this paper analyzes spatial–temporal evolution characteristics of urban green development efficiency (UGDE) and the peer effects of UGDE between cities of different grades. It is found that during the study period, in terms of temporal evolution, the average UGDE in China increased from 0.47 in 2003 to 0.61 in 2017, with a cumulative growth rate of 29.79%, showing a rising trend in general. In terms of spatial evolution, the number of low-efficiency cities and medium-efficiency cities continued to decrease. The eastern region has always been the main distribution area of higher-efficiency cities and high-efficiency cities; in the central region, UGDE in most cities improved significantly; in the western region, UGDE has always lagged behind that in the eastern and central regions. In addition, the center of gravity of UGDE presented a trend of northwest migration in general, with a total displacement of 100.07 km, and UGDE showed a spatial dispersion trend. The empirical results indicate that the improvement of UGDE in large cities has a driving effect on that in neighboring medium cities and small cities through the positive peer effect, and the growth of UGDE in medium cities has a promoting effect on that in neighboring small cities through the positive peer effect; the increase of UGDE in medium cities has a positive peer effect on that in neighboring large cities, and the growth of UGDE in small cities has a positive peer effect on that in neighboring medium cities; UGDE promotes each other between large cities through the positive peer effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on multi-task principal–agent theories, we aim in this paper to explore a hitherto understudied politics–infrastructure nexus using a data set of Chinese municipal leader profiles. Analysing a panel dataset of 2,399 political leaders’ profiles and infrastructure-investment change across 283 Chinese cities from 2002 to 2016, we demonstrate that city leaders adopt an inverted U-shaped curve regarding infrastructure-investment growth over their tenures. The investment fluctuation strengthens in municipalities with a relatively lower degree of institutional development and in municipalities which have fewer political resources. Furthermore, a higher frequency of political turnover leads to a higher average growth rate of infrastructure investment. This study suggests that fluctuation in infrastructure investment in China is aligned with political incentives, offering new opportunities for comparative studies of global relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]