Uneven development, urbanization and production of space in the middle-scale region based on the case of Jiangsu province, China

- A set of index reflects spatial influences of capital, power as well as class.
- Urbanization in the middle-scale region like Jiangsu is hybrid and greatly uneven.
- Urbanization driven by capital and power lead to latent social risks and spatial inequality.
- Space and society interact, entangle and (re)shape the pattern of urbanization.

The space in the process of urbanization is undergoing a great transition from physical space to social space. The relations between society and space become more important and complicated than ever. As a critical social theory, production of space means that urbanization has been reshaped by social factors or forces like capital, power and class, so that the urban space finally becomes their production and process. Based on socio-spatial dialectic, the main methodology of spatial production, urban space (re)shapes social relations and processes. The different spatial scales have and continuously produce the different social relations. In the researches about production of space, little work has been done on the index system to assess the extent of production of space and to analyze middle-scale region. This article designs a set of simple index system to reflect the spatial influences of capital, power as well as class, and chooses Jiangsu Province as a typical case because of its rapid and differential urbanization to indicate the process of spatial production from 2000 to 2015. In this index system, capital is represented by fixed-asset investment, real estate investment and foreign direct investment; power is represented by the index of the constructed urban land area; the index reflecting class is the urban-rural income ratio. Based on the analysis of these changing indexes, this paper finds that urbanization in Jiangsu is hybrid process: the forces from capital and power greatly contribute to rapid urbanization and high urbanization level, however, the gaps among the three sub-regions in the province and rural-urban income inequality have not decreased accordingly. Conversely, these gaps enlarge in some periods. This kind of urbanization pattern is characterized by large-scale spatial expansion, and is driven by capital and power, but there are many latent social risks and spatial inequality. In the process of spatial production, space and society interact, entangle and (re)shape the pattern of urbanization in the end.