Urban Allometric Scaling in China

Urban Allometric Scaling in China The change of air pollution, economic and infrastructure factors and the change of the urban size (in terms of population) empirically might approximate allometric relationships: the former linearly (proportionally), superlinearly (more than proportionally) or sublinearly (less than proportionally) linked to the urban size. Based on the national census, municipal and environmental department data, we study the link between the urban population size, and air pollution, economic and infrastructure factors, founding that per capita disposable income and industrial surface are superlinearly linked with urban size, while GDP (surprisingly) and urban surface, sublinearly. The average winter temperature is inversely proportional to the concentration of PM10, NO2, CO, O3, and SO2, and the concentration of PM2.5 and PM10 is directly proportional to the road area density in the built-up area. We also found that the bigger the city, the higher the real estate price, PM2.5, PM10, NO2, CO, and SO2. The focus of the development of cities with large populations is still to develop the economy rather than optimize the living environment of residents, or the optimization of living environment has not caught up with the speed of urban expansion. The calculation results can help to formulate urban-regional strategic plans, and have an understanding of the evolutionary process of the relationship between cities size and some urban variable and provide important references for future trends and pros/cons of having big cities and megacities (under their current typology).