The governmental initiative of high-quality development (HQD) marks a shift in the Chinese development paradigm from prioritizing speed to prioritizing quality towards comprehensive goals of economic growth, social vitality, innovation capacity, industrial upgrading, regional cooperation, and green transformation. This initiative is increasingly discussed within the framework of mega-regions, with prior studies demonstrating that they are critical arenas for promoting HQD visions. However, unevenness within mega-regions has become an important limitation to this vision. Namely, significant disparities exist between mega-regional core cities and the smaller neighboring cities in most HQD indicators. This paper conceptualizes these smaller players as secondary cities. Based on this, this paper aims to understand and differentiate the specific challenges of secondary cities facing intra-regional unevenness in the context of HQD. We build an evaluation framework and employ the TOPSIS method to evaluate 34 core cities and 180 secondary cities. Then, we introduce typological thinking to develop a meaningful classification of secondary cities based on the results of these evaluations. K-means clustering analysis identifies five secondary city types with similar profiles. The analysis supports the discussion of the characteristics and challenges of each type and may contribute to policy recommendations for a balanced HQD in mega-regional secondary cities.

This paper criticizes traditional models of urban–regional expansion, which depart from monocentric ideals of urban core and ring. The original spatial-cycle model (SCM) suggests repeating stages of urbanization, suburbanization, disurbanization and re-urbanization. We reconceptualize the relations between core(s) and ring(s) to test the formation of urban regions under mono-, multi- and polycentric trajectories. The analysis employs local population data in functional urban regions in Finland, Austria and the Netherlands, three countries with different urbanization patterns, for the period 1961–2011. Results suggest a ‘break of the cycle’ in polycentric regions and a shift towards a different period, which we call ‘syncurbanization’.

Despite the many uncertainties of life in cities, promises of economic prosperity, social mobility and happiness have fuelled the imagination of generations of urban migrants in search of a better life. Access to jobs, housing and amenities, and fewer restrictions of personal choices are some of the perceived advantages of cities, characterised here as ‘urban promises’. But while discourses celebrating the triumph of cities became increasingly common, urban rewards are not available everywhere and for everyone. Alongside opportunity, cities offer inequality, conflict and poor living conditions. Their narrative of promise has been persistent across different times and places, but the outcomes and experiences of urban life compare poorly with the overoptimistic expectations of many newcomers. And yet, millions still come and stay regardless of odds, raising the question why we have such positive and persistent expectations about cities. To examine this question, this paper considers the process of urban migration from the perspective of decision-making under uncertainty. It discusses how decisions and evaluations are based on imperfect information and offers a novel contribution by examining how the cognitive biases and heuristics which restrict human rationality shape our responses to urban promises. This approach may allow a better understanding of how people make decisions regarding urban migration, how they perceive their urban experiences and evaluate their life stories. We consider the prospects and limitations of the behavioural approach and discuss how biases favouring narratives of bright urban futures can be exploited by ‘triumphalist’ accounts of cities which neglect their embedded injustices.