1. Introduction
With the global spread of manufacturing, the elements of globalization dominated by advanced producer services are concentrated in the world cities [
1,
2], and some specialized and standardized manufacturing sectors are spreading to larger regional scales by means of advanced transportation logistics and communication technologies [
3,
4], which have gradually formed a highly integrated multi-center, multi-level global city-region centered on an international metropolis [
5,
6,
7]. Currently, the industrial space within the global city-regions in western countries has entered the post-industrialization stage. A large number of scholars have kept a close eye on the phenomenon that the main economic activities such as advanced producer services (APS), knowledge-intensive industries, and innovative industries are reshaping the regional spatial structure in the context of the rise of knowledge economy [
8,
9,
10,
11]. However, in the global city-regions of developing countries, industrialization and deindustrialization are going on at the same time [
12,
13]. The paths of regional integration into economic globalization are not the same, and the regional spatial structure presents differences and typicality. Scholars mainly focus on the fact that headquarters economy, producer APS, foreign direct investment (FDI), or foreign-funded manufacturing industry, as the leading industries, have an important impact on regional economic development and regional spatial structure [
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19]. The spatial reconstruction of the manufacturing industry is still the key variable for shaping the spatial structure of the global city-regions of developing countries [
20]. However, there is not enough attention paid to other types of manufacturing industries besides foreign-funded manufacturing industry. Therefore, it is necessary to study the development of manufacturing industry in the global city-region of developing countries. The first aim of this paper is to improve public understanding of manufacturing spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors in the global city-regions of developing countries.
On the other hand, in the context of economic globalization, manufacturing industry was always playing an important role in shaping the spatial structure of the city-regions. In the past, scholars studied the spatial distribution of manufacturing industry in city-regions of western countries, mainly based on the metropolitan scale to explore the location selection mode of FDI enterprises [
21], the spatial distribution characteristics of industrial activities [
22,
23,
24] or different types of manufacturing industry [
25] and their influencing factors, etc. More recently, with the deepening development of economic globalization, manufacturing space has spread to a larger region, such as the global city-regions of developing countries [
5,
26]. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the differences of manufacturing spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors between developing countries and Western countries at the scale of global city-region. The second aim of this paper is to improve public understanding of the similarities and differences of manufacturing spatial distribution characteristics and its influencing factors in global city-regions between developing countries and Western countries.
However, based on the perspective of industrial development, several scholars have paid much attention to the spatial agglomeration characteristics of different types of manufacturing industry in the city-regions of developing countries [
27,
28]. Furthermore, the mainstream researches on the spatial agglomeration characteristics of manufacturing industry mainly focus on making use of economic census data, manufacturing industry data in the industrial sector, or data on the employment of the manufacturing industry, taking urban [
29,
30,
31] or urban internal streets or districts [
32,
33,
34] as statistical units, in order to construct the industrial space of manufacturing industry. However, such kinds of researches are mainly based on the economic statistics and enterprise attribute data to construct the manufacturing industry space that are not accurate enough, and the spatial continuity is not good enough, either. Therefore, it could not guide local industrial policy and urban spatial planning precisely and appropriately [
35]. In recent years, with the rapid development of remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) technology, it is possible to obtain large-scale spatial information accurately and continuously. Scholars mainly explore the land use change and spatial evolution process in city-regions by means of these spatial analysis methods [
36,
37,
38,
39]. Few scholars have also made use of RS and GIS technology to conduct relevant explorations on the spatial characteristics of industrial production space [
40,
41], the spatial and temporal evolution of industrial production space and its driving mechanism [
42]. However, the industrial production space includes a large area of mining, electricity, heat, gas and water production and supply, and construction industry, which cannot characterize the spatial state of regional real economic production activities more accurately. Using remote sensing technology and the point of interest (POI) data, a large area of urban ground objects can be accurately extracted [
43,
44,
45,
46]. Therefore, using RS and GIS technology to extract spatial information of manufacturing industry, and combining the POI data of manufacturing enterprises to obtain attribute information of manufacturing enterprises, then separating the manufacturing production space from the industrial production space, and exploring the spatial structure and spatial form characteristics of the manufacturing entities in the city-regions need to be strengthened.
The manufacturing production space is the implementation of manufacturing activities and manufacturing sectors in the geographical space. Its spatial characteristics not only reflect the evolution of the spatial pattern of production activities as well as its physical elements in the historical period, but also influences the future direction of regional economic space [
47]. The global city-regions have the function of the regional production platform with global market competitiveness [
5], but the fine layout of the manufacturing production space within the region is still not clear [
6]. Therefore, it is of great significance to select the advanced local production platform of developing countries as the case area to explore the distribution characteristics and influencing factors of the regional manufacturing production space. As an advanced territorial platform for China to integrate into economic globalization, the research of Pearl River Delta (PRD) has always attracted much attention from scholars [
48,
49]. At the current stage, there is a new phenomenon of manufacturing enterprises moving out and moving in of the global city-region of the PRD [
17]; these will lead to a new round of reconstruction of manufacturing production space. Meanwhile, since the financial crisis of the year of 2008, with tension and rising labor costs, land resource issues of emergency resource environmental bearing capacity is increasingly serious, the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has put forward that production space should be intensive and efficient. The manufacturing production space, as an important part of city-region function space and contradiction problem of the most prominent areas, the optimal control is extremely urgent [
50,
51]. Accurately identifying and analysing the true and continuous distribution of manufacturing production space in the city-region is the basis for optimizing the regulation and promoting the intensive, efficient and sustainable development [
43,
52]. Therefore, the third aim of this paper is to guide the formulation of intensive regulation and control policies of manufacturing production space according to the agglomeration characteristics of manufacturing production space under different spatial scales based on the local development background—not only meeting the national/regional development program, but also promoting the sustainable development of local economy and production space.
The structure of the manuscript is as follow: First, this study made use of RS and GIS technology and combined POI data of manufacturing enterprises to conduct accurate identification and extraction the entity information of production space of manufacturing industry through high-resolution Google Earth images. Second, the spatial analysis of mathematical statistics and exponential models were conducted to conduct an analysis of the manufacturing production space characteristics of the PRD under different spatial scales. Finally, the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model was introduced to further explore the spatial heterogeneity of the main influencing factors of manufacturing production space in the PRD counties (districts), so as to provide planning reference for the sustainable development and optimization of manufacturing production space in global city-region of the PRD in the future.
7. Conclusions
This study mainly figured out the spatial characteristics of manufacturing production space at different scales, and influencing factors of the spatial pattern of manufacturing production space in the global city-regions of developing countries. Then, it compared the similarities and differences of spatial characteristics of manufacturing production space and its influencing factors in the global city-regions between developing countries and western countries, and put forward some policy suggestions for the optimal control and precise planning of manufacturing production space.
According to this article, after a period of economic globalization, the spatial pattern of manufacturing production space in global city-regions in developing countries was significantly different from that in western countries. In the new round of global capital cycle, manufacturing production space was mainly distributed in the global city-regions of developing countries. Due to the further promotion of space–time compression of traffic and communication technology, different from the 1950s, the manufacturing production space in western countries was mainly distributed in the core cities, and the manufacturing production space was mainly distributed in the secondary cities of the global city-region (namely, typical manufacturing cities). While in different historical periods and in different regions, the factors that affect the spatial distribution of manufacturing production space in the urban-regions of the developing countries and the western countries have similarities, which are related to the level of local urbanization, the level of industrialization, the level of government investment in the infrastructure, and so on. Further speaking, the current global city-regions of developing countries are still in the process of rapid industrialization, and the export-oriented impetus of economic globalization plays an important role in regional development. Therefore, the optimal regulation and control of manufacturing production space and future development planning in global city-regions of developing countries (which maybe have much bigger area compared with western countries’ global city-regions) in the current period cannot copy the western experience. Then, based on the local development background and the past development experience of western countries used for reference, the study made further efforts to provide the policy references of intensive regulation and control policies of manufacturing production space according to the agglomeration characteristics of manufacturing production space under different spatial scales.
In order to guide local industrial policy and urban spatial planning precisely and appropriately, in this study manufacturing production space based on RS technology and POI data extraction is more precise and continuous. It can enrich the practical content applied to developing countries, and the analysis results of multi-scale, continuous, and accurate spatial characteristics of manufacturing production space have important implications for China’s policymakers. It is also essential for local governments in global city-region of PRD and other similar global city-regions of developing countries to recognize that under different scales the distribution characteristics of manufacturing production space and the agglomeration characteristics of spatial form are different. It is not simply extensive agglomeration or diffusion that can accurately explain its diversified spatial characteristics. The specific main policy recommendations are as follows:
- ①
For the local industrial space optimization control, cannot simply extensive promotion or containment. On the basis of ensuring the overall industrial ecological balance in the region, the local governments should make precise regulation according to the actual situation of the development of manufacturing production space in different cities.
- ②
For the core districts in global cities, we should continue to control the distribution of manufacturing production space and promote APS distribution with higher industrial added value and control function. For the peripheral areas of global cities, the local government should control the distribution of manufacturing enterprises of "three highs"——high pollution, high energy consumption, and high emission.
- ③
For typical manufacturing cities, the districts with development intensity of more than 30% should be strictly controlled and the stock of extensive utilization of manufacturing production space should be actively activated.
- ④
The agglomeration degree of manufacturing production space in the peripheral counties (districts) of the PRD is better, but the output value of regional manufacturing industry is relatively backward. Therefore, the local government should control the development intensity of manufacturing production space, and more importantly, improve the technological content of manufacturing enterprises and promote innovation and development.