Spatial heterogeneity of economic development and industrial pollution in urban China

The relationship between economic development and environmental pollution has been widely studied in the context of the environmental Kuznets curve. This study applies the three-dimension framework of density, division, and distance proposed by the World Bank to identify the spatial heterogeneity of development and pollution in urban China. An inverted U relationship is detected between density and industrial SO2 emission, while a cubic relationship is found between density and industrial SO2/soot emission intensity. The statistical significance of division indicates that the pollution haven hypothesis holds in the western region and cities in the periphery. The environmental implication of distance is that the industrial pollution is largely concentrated in the national and regional cores.