Theoretical Framework of China’s Urbanization

The second chapter aims to present the reader the theoretical frameworks of China’s urbanization research. For this purpose, first it goes through urban studies from different disciplines such as urban geography and urban economics in a concise way. Then it reviews the classic urbanization theories such as industrialization-led urbanization theory and modernization-led urbanization theory that had been once popularized in history. After rethinking on these theories, this chapter then proposes that there are new trends in contemporary urbanization. Particularly it mentions the thoughts from political economy and new theoretical turns of urbanization, such as sociological turn and political turn. In the last section, it presents six conceptual frameworks that are being applied for China’s urbanization research. They are the dynamic approach, the economic globalization perspective, multi-dimensional perspective, the people-oriented framework, the quantitative framework, and the coupled ecological-environmental framework.