Landscape and Urban Planning 151 (2016) 10–20 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Landscape and Urban Planning journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan Research paper How polycentric is urban China and why? A case study of 318 cities Xingjian Liu a,b,* , Mingshu Wang c a Department of Urban Planning and Design, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong b HKU Shenzhen Institute of Research and Innovation, Shenzhen, China c Department of Geography, University of Georgia, USA h i g h l i g h t s • Over 90% of cities have four or fewer intra-city centers. • Higher degree of polycentricity is found in mountainous cities. • Polycentricity is positively associated with GDP per capita in Eastern China. • Identified patterns of centers in a number of cities are largely consistent with corresponding master plans. a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 18 August 2015 Received in revised form 23 February 2016 Accepted 10 March 2016 Keywords: China Polycentricity Subcenters Intra-city Urban form Urban policy a b s t r a c t Despite much insightful work on polycentric urban development in China, there is a lack of systematic comparison at the intra-city level. Therefore, this paper explores polycentric urban development in 318 cities of China using detailed gridded population data. Our analysis examines the spatial structure of urbanized area within individual cities and identifies population centers within cities that are at the prefectural level and above. Our empirical results suggest that over 90% of Chinese cities have four or fewer ‘centers’, and approximately 40% only have one ‘dominating’ center. Regression models reveal that higher degrees of polycentricity are associated with cities in fragmented landscapes. Conditioning on topographic characteristics and total land area, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is associated positively with high polycentricity in Eastern China. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that the devel- opment of multiple (sub)centers in a number of cities (e.g., Shanghai and Tianjin) is relatively consistent with their master plans. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The emergence of polycentric urban development has been highlighted in recent literature (Anas, Arnott, & Small, 1998; Audirac, 2005; Musterd & Kloosterman, 2001; Vasanen, 2012). Polycentric cities are formed when previously close-by but inde- pendent urban settlements form a larger and more integrated city-system. Polycentricity is oftentimes deemed a desirable urban form, generating greater agglomeration externalities as well as facilitating the achievement of social, economic, and environmen- tal goals (Parr, 2004). More importantly, polycentricity has been observed and analyzed at various geographical scales, including the intra-city scale (e.g., Central Business Districts (CBDs), edge cities, and satellite towns within a city), the inter-city scale (e.g., the ‘Pearl * Corresponding author at: Department of Urban Planning and Design, The Uni- versity of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. E-mail address: xliu6@hku.hk (X. Liu). River Delta’ mega-city region), and the trans-regional scale (e.g. continental ‘development poles’ identified in European Union’s territorial development policies; Halbert, Convery, & Thierstein, 2006). This paper focuses on polycentric urban development at the intra-city level in China, based on the identification of intra-city population centers. As the world’s most populous country and largest developing economy, China’s urban transformation has sig- nificant global socioeconomic and environmental impacts (Bai, Shi, & Liu, 2014). A recent World Bank report suggests that China is home to approximately 70% cities with more than 100 thousands people in East Asia and the Pacific region (World Bank, 2015). Among all strategies and measures to tackle the challenges of China’s urban transformation, we witness an increase in normative plans and policies that target at polycentric urban development (Liu, Derudder, & Wu, 2015). For example, (polycentric) urban regions are identified as the cornerstone in the recently released national plan for ‘new form of urbanization’ and also referred to http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.03.007 0169-2046/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.