Unveil urbanization ‘bubbles’ in China: Sustainable urbanization in theory and policy

Abstract

Over the last three decades, China has experienced accelerated urbanization with expanding urban built-up area, soaring urban housing prices, and many other phenomena, which raises grave concerns about the possible existence of urbanization bubbles. After defining the judgment of land urbanization bubble and its four states named bubble-free, controllable bubble, potential bubble, and uncontrollable bubble, this chapter reflects the matching of urbanization demand and supply through the four-quadrant axis and completes the empirical analysis of China’s urbanization bubble in terms of land between 2006 and 2016. The results indicate: (1) before 2008, the population and urban built-up area expansions are generally at a low level. After that, a large number of cities have a large-scale population expansion and urban built-up expansion; (2) land urbanization bubbles occur in more cities after 2008; (3) cities with uncontrolled bubbles are all non-first-tier cities, while cities without land urbanization bubbles are different.