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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Land Use Dynamics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1545346
This article is part of the Research Topic Moving Towards Sustainable Development: Exploring the Impact of Land-Use Policies on Land Green Utilization Efficiency View all 3 articles

The impact of urban polycentralization and scale expansion on economic efficiency: Evidence from Chinese cities

Provisionally accepted
Xinyang Jiang Xinyang Jiang *Siyi Wei Siyi Wei Chen Yi Chen Yi Siyu Liu Siyu Liu Bo Yang Bo Yang Yao Wu Yao Wu
  • Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study investigates the effects of urban polycentricity and city size on total factor productivity (TFP) in Chinese cities. Using high-resolution population distribution data from Landscan and applying instrumental variable (IV) estimation to address endogeneity concerns, we construct a novel measure of urban polycentricity. Our findings show that while expanding city size enhances TFP through increased economies of scale, greater urban polycentricity negatively affects productivity by weakening agglomeration economies and innovation spillovers. The analysis suggests that polycentricity reduces the concentration of economic activities, which hampers knowledge diffusion and innovation, leading to lower productivity. Additionally, we identify the optimal city size for maximizing TFP, where excessive urban growth beyond a certain point becomes counterproductive.

    Keywords: Total factor productivity (TFP), Polycentricity, agglomeration effect, City size, Innovation spillover, China

    Received: 14 Dec 2024; Accepted: 10 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Jiang, Wei, Yi, Liu, Yang and Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Xinyang Jiang, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.