Suburbanization and subcentering of population in Beijing metropolitan area: A nonparametric analysis

Abstract

This study focuses on the suburbanization and subcentering of population and examines the nature of spatial restructuring in terms of the population distribution in the Beijing metropolitan area. Instead of the classic density function approach, we employ the nonparametric analysis to characterize the spatial pattern of population densities in the Beijing metropolitan area and identify the suburban subcenters. Our findings suggest that the population has spread with rapid urban growth in the Beijing metropolitan area, and the compact urban form has been replaced by a more dispersed polycentric spatial distribution. However, compared with the decentralization of western cities, the spatial extent of the decentralization of population in the Beijing metropolitan area is quite limited. The rapid growth of population in the near suburbs has expedited the sprawl of the central city, with a larger central agglomeration of population dominating the metropolitan area. In this sense, the spatial pattern of the Beijing metropolitan area is still characterized by the continuous compactness. However, our findings do provide the evidence that the city has been turning to a polycentric structure. We find significant population subcenters have emerged in the suburbs of Beijing since the 1980s. But the polycentricity emerged in the Beijing metropolitan area is very different by nature from that observed in Western cities. The subcenters emerged are adherent to the development scheme planned for the city, so it can be referred to as the so called’ planned polycentricity’.