Redai dili (Feb 2024)
Theoretical Elaboration and Policy Typologies of Specialty Towns: Evidence from Zhejiang, China
Abstract
The construction of specialty towns is positioned as an important breakthrough and down-to-the-ground path in the implementation of China's new-type urbanization strategy. It highlights the roles of place-based industrial specialization and agglomeration economics. In this process, the Chinese government plays a supportive and guiding role in enabling and aligning multiple actors to engage with to build new platforms for innovation and entrepreneurial activities that integrate the functions of production, living, and ecology. The specialty towns construction strategy is aimed at promoting people-based urbanization and the regional ability of endogenous development. Given the "top-down" and standardization-led nature of the specialty towns policy program, implementation and practices at the local level are both challenging and problematic. This paper adopts perspectives and concepts from evolutionary economic geography and agglomeration economics to explore the antecedents and mechanisms of urbanization. It emphasizes the geographical spatiality of the program in local implementation. Taking 134 provincial specialty towns of Zhejiang province as research cases, the paper refers to a mixed set of methodologies of on-site, interview-based fieldwork; an online survey; and a document analysis to identify the historical foundations, industry attributes, and development objectives of the specialty towns. It also generates a typology of the 134 specialty towns, as well as a typological guideline regarding policy intervention for the broader implementation of specialty towns in China. Three main types of specialty towns are identified in our study: The first type is built on the basis of state-led, sci-tech industrial parks/new towns, whose development aims are oriented toward the development of new industrial paths. The second type is based on firm-led specialized markets located in small administrative towns that support the upgrading and renewal of existing local traditional industries. The third type is featured by the local presence of place-specific natural or sociocultural resources, and it is based on scenic spots. It is oriented to the development of the tourism economy. In conclusion, this study promotes the incorporation of evolutionary economic geography perspectives into the policy implementation of specialty towns and calls for taking the concepts of history, space, and place into account for a better understanding of these towns. By so doing, future policy methods will not be standardized, quota-based, and top-down.
Keywords
