Impact of high-speed rail on population mobility and urbanisation: A case study on Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, China

摘要

Through rapid and large-scale transportation across regions, high-speed rail improves urban accessibility and decreases the space time distances between cities, greatly enhancing the spatial connection between cities along the route. Based on the panel data from 2005 to 2016 of 26 cities of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, a region with one of the most densely constructed high-speed rail network in China, this paper constructs a difference-in-difference model to investigate the impacts of high-speed rail service on the population mobility, and the impacts on urbanisation from the perspectives of population and industrial structure. The results showed that high-speed rail had a negative effect on long-term population migration and significantly promoted short-term population mobility, leading to a negative effect on the population urbanisation; from the perspective of industrial structure, high-speed rail increased the proportion of the added value of the tertiary industry, promoted the upgrading of industrial structure, and consequently improved the quality of urbanisation.