Resumen de Exploring the geography of urban comprehensive development in mainland Chinese cities
Tianzuo Wen, Wei Qiang, Xingjian Liu
This study examines an emerging urban development practice in China, urban comprehensive development (UCD). Often entailing public-private partnerships (PPP) between local governments and private enterprises, UCDs have been increasingly used as an instrument to finance new towns and industrial development. In 2019, the volume of UCD project investment had reached 1.86 trillion RMB, which was about 24% of local tax revenue for the same year. This paper characterizes the spatial distribution of UCDs, identifies underlying socioeconomic correlates, and compares the locational strategies of UCDs and other non-UCD types of PPP projects with regression models. In particular, it finds that both UCD and other PPP investments have inverted U-curve correlations with local economic development. UCDs concentrate in more developed urban regions and may function as a supplement of land-based finance.
