Obstacles and Opportunities for Characteristic Town Development in Central China Area: Hubei Province Case Study

Abstract

To solve big cities’ concentrated industry distribution problems, China used the “characteristics town” strategy to restrict the excessive expansion of urban suburbanization and accelerate the counter-urbanization development process with the plan to build 1,000 “characteristic towns” by 2020. However, due to the large regional economic gaps, the quantity and quality of characteristic towns in the central and western regions of China are far behind the coastal developed. The central and western regions should not only strive to achieve the successful implementation of characteristic towns in developed coastal regions’, but also learn from other developed countries’ strategies that may have their own unique and successful features. This paper examines 16 national characteristic towns in Hubei province which is representative of the central and western regions in China. Factors like GDP growth, population loss, and lack of innovation industries were analyzed and identified as the main obstacles in the development process of characteristic towns. By comparing the statistical data of Japanese prefectures’ urbanization processes and development indicators to that of Chinese provinces, we found that the two stages of rapid urbanization in northeast Japan (1960–1975 and 2000-present) represent the next stages of urbanization in Hubei province. By analyzing the gains and losses in the first and second stages of rapid growth of urbanization in the northeast region of Japan, we suggest enhancing the traffic network, attracting labor talent, and ensuring the proper construction of industrial structure may help solve the problems posed by characteristic town development in the Hubei region.