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Driving factors for coordinating urbanization with conservation of the ecological environment in China

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Abstract

Urbanization is a dominant component of social and economic development around the world, but this process creates tremendous pressure on the ecological environment. How to achieve coordination between urbanization and conservation of this environment has become a key issue, especially in developing countries. It is necessary to identify the driving factors that affect this coordination. To identify these factors, we chose 290 Chinese prefecture-level cities to analyze the driving factors behind urbanization using spatial regression analysis, and explored the spatial differences among regions in these factors. Our results show that industrial upgrading and technological progress were the main factors that promoted coordinated development, with industrialization having positive effects under government management, but with differences among regions in how the driving forces affected coordinated development. Using technological progress to promote industrial upgrading, creating new employment to absorb surplus rural labor, and providing workers with skills training so they can take advantage of new jobs can promote win–win solutions that coordinate urbanization with conservation of the ecological environment.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Technology R & D Program (No. 2016YFC0501002). We thank Geoffrey Hart (Montréal, Canada) for editing an early version of this paper. We are also grateful for the comments and criticisms of the journal’s anonymous reviewers and our colleagues.

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    1. School of Economics, Minzu University of China, No. 27 Zhongguancun South Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100081, People’s Republic of China

      Zhaoyang Cai, Weiming Li & Shixiong Cao

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    1. Zhaoyang Cai
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    SC designed the research; ZC and WL performed the data analysis and wrote the main manuscript text. ZC and WL contributed equally to this work.

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    Correspondence to Shixiong Cao.

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    Cai, Z., Li, W. & Cao, S. Driving factors for coordinating urbanization with conservation of the ecological environment in China. Ambio 50, 1269–1280 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01458-x

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