China's capital, Beijing, has long been one of the world's largest urban areas. Some reports placed its population at over 1 million in 1800, which would have made Beijing the largest urban area in the world at that time. Later in the nineteenth century, Beijing dropped below 1 million population, as London, Paris and later New York rose to prominence. As late as 1953, Beijing had a population of fewer than 3 million. Since then the cityâ??s population has increased more than six times (Figure 1).
Beijing is one of China's four "directly administered municipalities" or "provincial level municipalities," along with Shanghai, Chongqing and Tianjin (Note 1). Moreover, like Shanghai and Tianjin, Beijing is essentially a metropolitan area, composed of an urban area and exurbs approximating a labor market. This is unlike Chongqing, which has extensive rural areas and extends far beyond any plausible
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