Central region includes six provinces: Shanxi, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui and Jiangxi, which naturally correspond to six provincial capitals.
On the eastern coast of my country, provincial capitals are not necessarily the strongest and largest cities. But it is different in the central region. Basically, it is the dominant city, and this city is of course the provincial capital.
If you want to sort these 6 cities, different reference indicators may lead to completely different answers.
For example, take GDP in 2021 as an example, the rankings are Wuhan, Changsha, Zhengzhou, Hefei, Nanchang , and Taiyuan. Among them, Wuhan, Changsha, Zhengzhou and Hefei have more than one trillion yuan, while Taiyuan has not even entered the top 50.
Since it is a city, the size of the city is naturally an important measurement indicator. However, the city size also has many parameters, such as built-up area, urban population, etc.
The national reference standard for urban system is only urban population, so this is a very critical indicator.
Recently, based on the population data of Qipu, the state has obtained the urban population size of the six provincial capitals in the central region, namely:
1, Wuhan, with a urban population of 995;
2, Changsha, with a urban population of 5.54 million;
3, Zhengzhou, and urban population of 5.34 million;
4, Taiyuan, with a urban population of 4.05 million;
5, Hefei, with a urban population of 3.77 million;
6, Nanchang, with a urban population of 3.34 million.
From the above data, we can see that there are now 3 megacities and 3 Type I major cities in the central region. The size of cities is not static, and these cities certainly have the possibility of further promotion.
1 city has been upgraded to a megacity: Wuhan. The deadline for the Seven-Census Census Census data is early November 2020, which has been more than a year since then, and the scale of many cities has changed.
Take Wuhan as an example. The announced urban population has reached 9.95 million, which is the largest among megacities, and it is only one step away from the threshold of megacities.
In 2021, according to population sampling data, the population increase of Wuhan City exceeded 1.2 million, making it the fastest growing city in the country. Such a high growth rate is definitely not the norm, but the return of population.
At this growth rate, Wuhan has already become one of the megacities in 2021, and Hubei has officially announced it at the beginning of this year. However, the data released by the state is based on the census.
In fact, Wuhan has become a megacity, which should be expected. Wuhan has always been the largest city in the central region.
In addition to Wuhan, Changsha and Zhengzhou are also megacities. Is there any hope of advancing to megacities? In terms of size, the urban population of Changsha and Zhengzhou is almost half that of Wuhan.
So if these two cities want to advance to megacities, they need to double their existing scale. In the short term, there is definitely little hope.
2 is expected to be upgraded to megacities: Taiyuan and Hefei. Taiyuan's GDP is the lowest among the six provincial capitals in the central region, but the city size ranks fourth, which should be beyond the expectations of many people.
According to the information released by the state, Taiyuan's urban population is 4.05 million, second only to the top three megacities.
Taiyuan was the center of Shanxi in history. The city has a total of 6 districts, 3 counties and 1 county-level city. The total permanent population of Qipu is 5.304 million. Compared with some provincial capital cities in central China, where the population is over 10 million, Taiyuan is indeed not large.
But this also shows a problem, although the total GDP of Taiyuan is not high, the per capita GDP of is not bad.
The total population is only 5.3 million, and the urban population exceeds 4 million. Taiyuan is still a city with a very high urbanization rate. Taiyuan has 6 municipalities, of which Xiaodian District has a population of 1.3572 million, making it the most populous county-level administrative district in Shanxi.
In the past decade, Taiyuan has added 1.10247 million new population. This population increase may not be very outstanding in southern cities, but among northern provinces, it is indeed a city with a very large population increase.
shows that in recent years, Taiyuan has undergone earth-shaking changes and its attractiveness to the population has gradually increased.Perhaps this is the fundamental reason why Taiyuan has low GDP, but the urban area has a large population!
Taiyuan has about 1 million people away from megacities. According to Taiyuan's population growth rate, it is expected that it can be upgraded to megacities in about 10 years.
Among the provincial capitals in the central region, Hefei is definitely a dark horse. Is Hefei originally anonymous in the provincial capital? In recent years, the economy has developed rapidly and has entered the ranks of trillion-dollar clubs.
The urban population of Hefei is a mystery, and there are many versions, but in the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, there are indeed only 3.77 million people, ranking relatively low among the central provincial capital cities.
In fact, this is related to the small number of districts under Hefei. The surrounding counties and cities have been integrated into the main urban area, but they cannot be considered the population of the urban area.
The most effective way to solve this problem is to withdraw the county and district. Although the country is now strictly controlling it, the situation in Hefei is quite special. If we can change Feidong and Feixi into districts, I believe Hefei will be upgraded to a megacity soon.
Finally, there is one , Nanchang City , which ranks at the bottom among the six provincial capitals in the central region by city scale. Since the threshold is slightly far from megacities, there is definitely little hope of upgrading in the short term.
