论加快城市化进程中的一些问题

我国的城市化滞后于工业化已成共识,但是否严重滞后,还存在分歧。原因在于不同学者选取的经济指标、采取的比较方法和研究的角度不同。分歧本身并不重要,关键在于认识城市化与工业化的关系,更好地加快城市化进程。一般认为,最佳城市规模是客观存在的,但它是有前提条件的,必须靠长期的技术进步和制度创新来不断降低城市聚集成本,从而扩大城市规模。因此,以城市规模选择城市化道路可能是一个误区;农村城市化是一柄“双刃剑”,强调任何一面都容易导致“一刀切”地推进或限制小城镇的发展。

Some Considerations in Quickening the Process of Urbanization

Though it is a consensus that the urbanization is lagged behind the industrialization in China, disagreement on whether the urbanization is far less developed does exist among scholars due to their varied perspectives of study, picking up different economic indicators and methods. Putting away the different opinions, we deem it more important to recognize the relationship between the urbanization and the industrialization, thus facilitating the health urbanization process. It is generally believed that the optimal city scale can be achieved if some pre-conditions be satisfied, that is to say, the long-term technological advancement and system innovation can continuously reduce the agglomerative costs of cities as well as to expand the scale of cities. So it is misleading to target the scale of cities for rural urbanization, which in itself is like a double-edged sword. Focusing on either one side will lead to promote or restrict the development of small towns in uniform manner.