Abstract: Over the past three decades Chinas urbanization process has made great achievements. However, what kind of city as an urban development strategy should focus on is always controversial. This paper attempts to take advantage of 143 prefecturelevel cities data to research whether there is a unique optimal city size in china and the results show that there is no single optimal city size standards. Based on the Zipf law and the index of the ability of providing job of urban, this paper studies the scale system of our existing cities, and explores that the overall size of the city is currently too small to provide sufficient employment. Finally, some relevant suggestions are provided based on research results.

Key words: optimal city size , urban scale system , urban development strategy , Zipf law

摘要： 过去30多年中国城市发展速度较快，然而究竟应该以何种规模的城市作为城市发展战略的重点始终存在争论。本文基于城市成本收益最优规模的罗伯特研究框架，利用中国143个城市数据采取分组估计方法进行检验，发现并不存在单一的最优城市规模。在此基础上，本文进一步利用齐普夫（ZIPF）法则和城市就业提供能力指数对中国现有城市规模体系进行研究，本文发现中国城市体系总体规模偏小且缺乏足够的就业提供能力。最后，本文根据相关研究结论提出符合中国实际的城市发展战略。

关键词: 最优城市规模 , 城市规模体系 , 城市发展战略 , 齐普夫法则