A Regional Categorization for “New-Type Urbanization” in China

Regional differences in the character of urbanization in China are substantial. The promotion of what has been termed “new-type urbanization” cannot, as a result of these regional differences, be expected to follow a universal approach—rather, such a development must objectively adhere to locational and category-specific principles and adopt differentiated urbanization development models. Regional categorization is often used in geography, but is rarely deployed in research addressing human and social problems relating to urbanization. In March 2014, China published the National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014–2020), which calls for the scientific and reasonable planning of “new-type urbanization,” and appropriate regional categorizations are urgently needed in order to guide this reform. Responding to this challenge, this research engaged in the design of a “dominantly quantitative analysis, qualitatively supplemented” method in order to divide China into 5 main regions and 47 sub-regions in terms of new-type urbanization. The paper discusses the features and key problems of each region. This study introduces a new method for regional categorization, thereby remedying the lack of regional categorization in relation to “new-type urbanization” in China, and ultimately promoting the development of regional categorization in the humanities as a valuable reference for healthy and sustainable Chinese urbanization.