RESEARCH ARTICLE A Regional Categorization for “New-Type

Regional differences in the character of urbanization in China are substantial. The promo-tion of what has been termed “new-type urbanization ” cannot, as a result of these regional differences, be expected to follow a universal approach—rather, such a development must objectively adhere to locational and category-specific principles and adopt differentiated urbanization development models. Regional categorization is often used in geography, but is rarely deployed in research addressing human and social problems relating to urbaniza-tion. In March 2014, China published the National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014–2020), which calls for the scientific and reasonable planning of “new-type urbanization, ” and appro-priate regional categorizations are urgently needed in order to guide this reform. Respond-ing to this challenge, this research engaged in the design of a “dominantly quantitative analysis, qualitatively supplemented”method in order to divide China into 5 main regions and 47 sub-regions in terms of new-type urbanization. The paper discusses the features and key problems of each region. This study introduces a new method for regional categori-zation, thereby remedying the lack of regional categorization in relation to “new-type urbani-zation ” in China, and ultimately promoting the development of regional categorization in the humanities as a valuable reference for healthy and sustainable Chinese urbanization