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The dearth of case studies on Third World urbanization and city size is unfortunate because in contrast to cross-national research these studies can explain special patterns of development. This study utilizes the recently published POPULATION ATLAS OF CHINA to analyze the relationship among city size economic development and physical quality of life. These data are unusually complete covering most of Chinas counties districts cities and other administrative units (N=2306). The data analysis produces 3 major results. 1st all-sized cities enjoy higher levels of economic development and physical quality of life relative to nonurban areas. 2nd externally oriented coastal cities possess higher levels of economic development but not a better quality of life. 3rd education and industrial employment contribute to both economic development and physical quality of life. Overall these findings support modernization theories and some aspects of the dependency/world-systems perspective. (authors)
Bradshaw et al. (Fri,) studied this question.