Urbanization for rural development: Spatial paradigm shifts toward inclusive urban-rural integrated development in China

Urbanization for rural development in the developing countries is often mired in the tension between economic productivity and social equality. Paradigm shifts in relation to spatial strategies are identified in the process of rural-urban transition in China. An adoption of regional dispersion under the central planning regime to mitigate disparity between regions inadvertently gives rise to local rural-urban divide during 1949-1978. Economic under-productivity does not bring up prosperous equality. Regional agglomeration has been engaged by the promarketization reforms to pursue productive urbanization since the economic reforms launched in 1978. A historical window also allows in-situ rural urbanization, market-driven local dispersion, to prosper, though spatially concentrated and temporally brief. Surging economic benefits in parallel with rising social costs prompts further paradigm shift after 30 years' rapid urbanization. This paper argues that the state-manipulated spatial dispersion may not help achieve true and real spatial equality, and well-off spatial equality has to be obtained through a mechanism of marketization in a relatively advanced stage of urbanization, helped by the government's facilitative policies. The strategy of regional dispersion with local agglomeration intends to strike a balance between growth and equality, aiming for inclusive integrated development of urban and rural entities.