Economic Space Evaluation of the 16 Urban Agglomerations in China:From the Perspective of New Economic Geography

Based upon studies of the urban agglomerations and the conceptual framework proposed by the 2009 annual report of the World Bank,this paper establishes a set of indicators to reflect the three dimensions of density,distance and division to comprehensively evaluate the economic space of 16 urban agglomerations in China by employing the PCA method.The result shows that there are three 3D Urban Agglomerations,three 2D ones,two 1D ones and eight 0D ones.The hierarchy of the urban agglomerations presents the shape of the pyramid.0D Urban Agglomerations might upgrade into 1D ones in the future.In general,the result agrees with the status of the urban agglomerations and provides policy suggestions for their development.The 3D conceptual framework remains to be refined and can also be applied at the city level.