Does China's City-Size Distribution Present a Flat Distribution Trend? A Socioeconomic and Spatial Size Analysis From DMSP-OLS Nighttime Light Data

Inconsistent measurements of city-size and a lack of time-series information on urban socioeconomic development have hindered determining whether China's city-size distribution (CD) follows a Pareto distribution according to multiple perspectives. This article has attempted to evaluate China's CD based on the defense meteorological satellite program- operational line-scan system (DMSP-OLS) nighttime light data in terms of socioeconomic size (SS) and spatial size (SC). First, city size was defined from the DMSP-OLS data. Then, whether China's CD followed a Pareto distribution was evaluated from different perspectives. The results show that China's CD from 1995 to 2015 presents a flat distribution trend; the flat distribution trend of the SC is more obvious than that of the SS; “borrowed size” has become an important reason for the flat trend of China's CD; and residential suburbanization, transportation cost reductions, local government policies, and land finances could effectively explain the CD differences in the flat trends between the SS and SC. This article offers an effective means for quantifying and comparing CD in long time series at a large scale (e.g., national scale or regional scale) and provides a scientific decision basis for governments to build a reasonable CD system in China.