Abstract:

Taking 16 Chinese urban agglomerations as research cases, this paper studied the effect of high-speed rail on producer services’ agglomeration in urban agglomerations, and its spatial variation based on the data of producer services’ employees of prefecture-level cities, railway origin-destination travel time, and train data for 2007 and 2017. The research was carried out in two steps, from static and dynamic points of view. The first was a static analysis of the spatial relationship between producer services’ agglomeration patterns and the high-speed rail network. The second analysis used the multiple linear regression model, taking the dynamic increment of producer services’ agglomeration level during 2007-2017 as a dependent variable. The conclusion consists of three viewpoints. First, high-speed rail positively contributes to the progress of producer services’ agglomeration, although this effect is concentrated mainly in eastern urban agglomerations, especially the Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration, the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. Within urban agglomerations, cities with a higher producer services’ agglomeration level in 2007 have benefited more from high-speed rail operations. Second, the effect of high-speed rail is restricted by the stage of economic development and the spatial structure of urban agglomerations. Relative diffusion of producer services from core cities to peripheral cities with sufficient support conditions along high-speed railways is more likely among eastern urban agglomerations because of their polycentric spatial structure. Third, besides the time-space compression effect, the organization of passenger transportation represented by the number of trains per day also significantly influences the agglomeration level of producer services. Population agglomeration, market demand increment, information level promotion, and positive government involvement are indirect approaches of the effect.

Key words: high-speed rail, urban agglomeration, producer services, agglomeration