大城市群正在成为城市化空间组织的主要形态,构成国家经济发展的重心。改革开放以来,中国重新纳入到世界经济体系之中,工业化与城市化加速发展推动了城市群规模壮大与能级提升。本文首先采用"五普"资料对大都市区进行界定,以大都市区为基本组成单元界定中国的大城市群,分析了中国13个大城市群的空间分布特征及在区域经济发展中的引领作用。

The large urban agglomerations are the main form of spatial organization of urbanization, and they have become the powerful engine of national economic development. Since reform and opening-up, China has re-integrated into the world economic system, and both industrialization and urbanization have accelerated the enlargement of scale of large urban agglomerations and upgraded their function level. This paper firstly defines the concept of Chinese metropolitan areas based on the data attained from the fifth national census, and distinguishes the three types of Chinese metropolitan areas. In 2000, China had a total of 117 metropolitan areas, of which twenty-six areas had a population of 2 million or more. Then, the paper defines the concept of large urban agglomerations in China, and summarizes the basic features of 13 large urban agglomerations. This paper uses the metropolitan area as the basic unit to define the concept of large urban agglomerations in China, then analyzes their spatial distribution and roles in regional development. And the author thinks that Chinese large urban agglomerations play important roles as the centre of gravity of the national economy and the growth engines in regional development.