City Size, Economic Development, and Quality of Life in China: New Empirical Evidence

The dearth of case studies on Third World urbanization and city size is unfortunate because, in contrast to cross-national research, these studies can explain special patterns of development. This study utilizes the recently published Population Atlas of China to analyze the relationship among city size, economic development, and physical quality of life. These data are unusually complete, covering most of China's counties, districts, cities, and other administrative units (N = 2,306). The data analysis produces three major results. First, all-sized cities enjoy higher levels of economic development and physical quality of life relative to nonurban areas. Second, externally oriented coastal cities possess higher levels of economic development but not a better quality of life. Third, education and industrial employment contribute to both economic development and physical quality of life. Overall, these findings support modernization theories and some aspects of the dependency/world-systems perspective.