关键词: 城市集群, 空间演化, 夜间灯光

Abstract: City cluster is a spatial phenomenon that appears with the continuous shortening of commuting time between cities and the continuous improvement of market integration. Taking 243 peripheral cities from 2008 to 2020 as the research object, this paper uses the matching data set of global satellite night-time light data and commuting time to build quantitative indicators of city clusters and city spatial evolution, and empirically analyzes the impact of peripheral city clusters on their spatial evolution and their operational mechanism. The research finds that the city cluster has significantly accelerated its internal spatial concentration. Then the paper discusses the endogeneity using the instrumental variables constructed from the historical geographic data of cities in the Qing Dynasty, and carries out a series of robustness and heterogeneity analysis. Further mechanism analysis confirms that in the dual “core-periphery” space, the peripheral city clusters can enhance the agglomeration effect of labor and enterprises in core areas, and this effect will be enhanced with the increase of the dominance of the core areas. The paper expands the research on city spatial evolution to the scale of dual “core-periphery” space. The conclusions may provide new ideas for a deep understanding of city spatial evolution and solidly promoting common prosperity in China.

Key words: City Cluster, Spatial Evolution, Night-time Light