Research on the Impact of Government Environmental Information Disclosure on Green Total Factor Productivity: Empirical Experience from Chinese Province

Government environmental information disclosure is an important means to promote environmental supervision and law enforcement, and improve the level of environmental management. In order to explore the impact of government environmental information disclosure on the sustainability of urban economic growth, this paper uses the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) to measure the degree of government environmental information disclosure, studies its effect on green total factor productivity through two-way fixed effect model and systematic GMM estimation method, and further adopts threshold model to study whether there is heterogeneity in this effect. The results show that: (1) Each unit of government environmental information disclosure will increase green total factor productivity by 0.2 units. (2) Considering the endogeneity, the promotion of government environmental information disclosure to green total factor productivity has increased. (3) The degree of government environmental information disclosure plays a non-linear role in the path of green total factor productivity. The greater the degree of economic development, the more obvious the effect of government environmental information disclosure on green total factor productivity. Therefore, this paper believes that the government should strengthen the disclosure of environmental information based on the urban economic development to ensure the sustainability of urban economic development.

Interplay between auditory and visual environments in historic districts: A big data approach based on social media

Historic districts play a vital role in stimulating urban economic development, conserving regional culture, and enhancing public participation. Both auditory and visual environments, and the interplay between them, are critical to visitors’ perception and evaluation of historic districts. However, most studies have explored either the auditory or visual environments separately. The handful of existing studies on audiovisual interaction were confined to laboratory environments, leading to limited external validity. Here, we performed a data-driven study of the features of auditory and visual environments and the interaction between them in 17 historic towns in China using posts containing soundscape-related keywords and streetscape photos from a popular Chinese social media platform. First, we found that the auditory environments in historic districts mainly consist of man-made sounds from folkloric activities, the sounds of street shop vendors, and natural sounds from running water and birds. Second, street greenery, spatial enclosure, and presence of pedestrian in visual environment are positively associated with emotional feedback of the soundscape. This study and others support the importance of studying the auditory and visual environments of historic districts in conjunction. The innovative methods used in this study can be used in further studies in the field.

The Effect of Exhibition on Urban Economic Development

Along with the process of economic globalization, international exhibition concentrates the flow of people, logistics and information, which is in line with the trend of economic globalization. Exhibition economy is an important part of the global economy, and the study of exhibition will play a decisive role in regional economic development. This paper analyzes the influence of the number of exhibition activities, exhibition area, number of meeting activities and the number of meeting participants on direct economic benefits, induced economic benefits and total economic benefits on Xiamen City using multiple regression analysis. The results demonstrate the importance and difference of exhibitions and meetings to the economic development of Xiamen City.

MODERN APPROACHES TO DETERMINING THE CYCLICALITY OF URBAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The cyclic nature of development is intrinsic to socio-economic systems. Despite the fact that none of the economic cycles is identical to another one, they all have the same stages. The city is a complex multifunctional system. The economy of the city can be viewed as a set of entities belonging to different areas and activities remaining in different stages of the life cycle. The life cycle of the city is a succession of stages of emergence, growth, maturity, and decline. This continuity is the result of the cyclic development of a territory’s functional specialization. The duration and depth of the fluctuations at each stage of the cycle are determined by the influence of external and internal factors as well as the effectiveness of urban management. Therefore, the cyclic development for different territories can have its own specific trajectory. If the urban economy is flexible and adapts quickly to changes in the external and internal environment, the trajectory will be characterized by intermittent cycles. The more pronounced the change of the city development stages is, the more efforts should be made by the city managers in order to diversify the city’s functional structure and create alternative areas of labor application. The paper summarizes the concept of the ‘life cycle of the city’. It also considers the features of each stage of the city life cycle. The studies of the life cycle carried out by leading scientists and practitioners are analyzed. The methodology of assessing the stages of the life cycle and the prospects of urban development is proposed and justified. In the course of the research, the developments of domestic and foreign scientists were systematized and the limit values of indicators-identifiers of the stage of the territory life cycle were offered. Determining the stage of the city life cycle is an important tool assessing the prospects for the development of the urban territory and helping to make effective management decisions and prioritize strategic programs. The methodology of determining the stage of the economic cycle involves identifying points of growth that contribute to the transition from a state of depression or crisis to the phase of development (revitalization). This involves the search for objectively existing or potentially possible factors, prerequisites, resources that will provide an impetus to the advance of the urban economy. Such points of growth can be found in the city-forming sphere (new technologies at enterprises, new competitive types of products), resource factors (natural resources, transport infrastructure, medical, tourist, and other factors), scientific, educational, cultural, and other areas.

A critique of innovation districts: Entrepreneurial living and the burden of shouldering urban development

This article critically investigates the global trend toward urban innovation districts, a distinctly 21st-century spatial form. Innovation districts are a place-based, economic development strategy to concentrate the actors, entities, and infrastructure considered essential to process and product innovation. Built on the idea that today's innovation requires continuous interaction, the design of innovation districts incorporates a density of living and working amenities to accommodate a 24-7 live–work–play environment. At the heart of the innovation district strategies are the entrepreneurs meant to benefit from the built-in supports that help them scale their ideas and introduce products to the market. Despite an embrace by policymakers, to date, there has been little systematic analysis and critique of innovation district strategies or attempts to understand them as tools of neoliberal urban economic development. This article tracks how planners and other city development officials endorsed innovation districts during the Global Financial Crisis. The districts were a stopgap policy measure to accumulate economic benefits while waiting for market activity to resume. Furthermore, this paper argues that the emergence of innovation district strategy points to new governance arrangements that shift the burden of urban revitalization onto entrepreneurs who catalyze growth through their consumption and production activities. The findings are based on content analysis, site observations, and interviews with the creators, implementers, stakeholders, and users of innovation districts in Boston, St. Louis, and Dublin.

Classification of sponge city construction modes based on regional features

In order to make the sponge city construction model more consistent with the inherent characteristics of the city, this paper constructs classification of the sponge city construction index system. We carry out multivariate statistical and cluster analysis based on GIS and classify the different regions of mainland China, put forward key points of construction for different types of regions. The results show that climatic factor, hydrological factor and soil factor are the main factors affecting sponge city construction, followed by city scale and level of urban economic development, the third is underlying surface type and geomorphological type. The cities are classified into ten clusters, and they present a continuously zonal or flaky distribution from northeast to southwest on the whole, more than 80% of cities obviously present a continuously zonal or flaky distribution. Each of the nine clusters has at least one pilot city, which can be used as a reference for construction.

Dynamic Evolution of the Operating Efficiency of Development Zones in China

The efficient development of Economic and Technological Development Zones (ETDZs) across China has been key to the country’s economic transformation. Despite this, few studies have addressed the dynamic characteristics of the efficiency of ETDZs. Taking China’s 115 national ETDZs established before 2010 as the research sample, this study measures the comprehensive operating efficiency of ETDZs and identifies dynamic characteristics of that efficiency throughout the period 2011–2017, using a three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model and the Markov method. This research also explores the relationship between the operation efficiency of ETDZs and urban economic development. The results indicate that the operating efficiency of national ETDZs was generally low, and subject to a downward trend over the study period; the efficiency of ETDZs in the western region was found to be higher than that in the central and eastern areas. It was found that operating efficiency was stable in terms of the types of transfer witnessed, and the results emphasize the difficulty of achieving leapfrog development in a relatively short time. In addition, medium-high coupling coordination was detected in the relationship between urban social and economic development and the operating efficiency of ETDZs. When the operating efficiency of the ETDZ was high, this coupling coordination improved significantly. Finally, most of China’s ETDZs remain in a factor-driven stage in their development, with their expansion occurring at the expense of efficiency. Based on these results, this paper suggests that the government should pay greater attention to the overall efficiency and growth quality in the sustainable development of the country’s ETDZs.

Comprehensive Evaluation of Urban Economic Development in Yangtze River Delta Based on Cluster-Principal Component Analysis

The study of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration provides a reference for regional construction. We set up a suitable cluster model and a comprehensive evaluation model to evaluate the urban economic development and provide the basis for the government to formulate and adjust the economic measures. We use the heat map of correlation coefficient to eliminate the economic indicators that are less correlated with per capita GDP and use grey correlation analysis to detect the degree of correlation of economic indicators. The optimal method is determined by comparing the results of K-means clustering and fuzzy C-means clustering. In addition, we use principal component analysis to rank the status of urban economic development. The results show that the relationship between the added value of primary industry, the added value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, and per capita GDP is close to 0. Regional development level is not balanced. Chizhou, Xuancheng, Bengbu, and other cities lag behind in the economic rankings. Finally, it is suggested to reform the laggard cities and try to improve their economic strength from various economic indicators.

Do Creative Industries Generate Multiplier Effects? Evidence from UK Cities, 1997-2018

The creative industries have received much attention from economic geographers and others, both for their propensity to co-locate in urban settings and their potential to drive urban economic development. However, evidence on the latter is surprisingly sparse. In this paper we explore the long-term, causal impacts of the creative industries on surrounding urban economies. Adapting Moretti’s local multipliers framework, we build a new 20-year panel of UK cities, using fixed effects and a historic instrument to identify effects on non-creative firms and employment. We find that each creative job generates at least 1.9 non-tradable jobs between 1998 and 2018: this is associated with creative business services employees’ local spending, rather than visitors to urban amenities such as galleries and museums. We do not find the same effects for workplaces, and find no causal evidence for spillovers from creative activity to other tradable sectors, findings consistent with descriptive evidence on the increasing concentration of creative industries in a small number of cities. Given the small numbers of creative jobs in most cities, however, the overall effect size of the creative multiplier is small, and shapes only a small part of non-tradable urban employment change. Overall, our results suggest creative economy-led policies for cities can have positive – albeit partial – local economic impacts.