Hosted by the Program on Chinese Cities （PCC）
11/20/2025 6:00 PM-8:00 PM EST
Presenter: Kaihua Yuan
Lecturer, School of Public Administration, Hubei University
Visiting scholar, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Supervisor: Prof. Yan Song
Abstract:
New-type urbanization in China is shifting from a focus on scale expansion to a deeper transformation that emphasizes quality, structure and resilience. On the one hand, it drives high-density agglomeration of population and industry and thus tends to accelerate growth in energy use and carbon emissions. On the other hand, by relying on spatial concentration, institutional innovation and technological progress, it can improve resource allocation efficiency and become an important engine of low-carbon transition. However, most existing studies remain at a superficial correlation between the level of urbanization and carbon emissions and reduce new-type urbanization to a single policy indicator, which makes it difficult to clarify what kind of urbanization, and through which sectoral pathways, actually drives China’s move toward low-carbon development.Building on the practice of new-type urbanization within China’s institutional context, this study develops an integrated analytical framework that links four dimensions of new-type urbanization with three domains of low-carbon transition. It brings together population urbanization, spatial urbanization, green urbanization and urban rural integration with a multidimensional carbon emission profile for production, living and transportation sectors in a unified analytical system, and examines their synergies and tensions. On this basis, the study identifies the direct and indirect effects of each dimension of new-type urbanization on sectoral emissions and traces the transmission chains behind these effects, thereby revealing the internal mechanisms and key leverage points through which new-type urbanization drives low-carbon transition. Overall, it seeks to shift the debate from how much urbanization is needed to how high-quality new-type urbanization can induce a systemic low-carbon transition in production, living and transportation systems, and to provide analytical tools and empirical support for exploring an institutionally distinctive, spatially differentiated and cross-sectorally coordinated pathway of low-carbon urbanization in China.