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Since 1960s, as a result of the increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions, the free flowing of international capitals, and the more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology, the interdependence among the world in regard of economic has been enhanced a lot, which exactly reflects the phenomena of the economic globalization. In fact, it is the economic globalization, which refers to the fluxion, distribution and reconstruction of capitals, information, technologies, labor and resource throughout the whole world, that indicates a unitary process of the world’s development, viz. the process which is increasing the interdependence, integration and interaction among people, companies and corporations in disparate locations around the world. What is more important, the tendency of globalization, which is on the basis of the global economy, is increasing the global connectivity, integration and interdependence in terms of economic, social, technological, cultural, political, and ecological spheres. This integration is able to surpass the limitation of territory and, as a result, could weaken the influence of governance and even could lead to the deconcentration of a country’s power to some extent.According to the aforementioned context, a country’s urban development and urbanization process which seem to belong to the category of internal affairs turn to be prone to the impact of the globalization and the world. However, because of the scarcity of convictive explanation related to globalization, so far people, including researchers and scholars, have not recognized globalization well and still lock into the endless debates, let alone apply the relevant theories to the urban affaires and then solve specific problems. Therefore, from a development perspective, this dissertation sets globalization and urbanization as the two main objects and aims to explore this new area, depending on the existed theories of planning, statistics, sociology and history, and using the methodologies in both quantitative and qualitative.With this regard, the main framework of this research focuses on the discussion and resolutions of the following three questions:①whether there exists the correlation between the globalization and urbanization;②assuming the above relationship do exists, then what the mechanism between the two is and why;③assuming we find out this mechanism, then how to make advantage of it to facilitate a better performance of urbanization, particularly for the developing countries such as China. Therefore, this study is organized as follows:First of all, based on the modeling of both the globalization level and urbanization level, the author calculated the coefficients of correlation and partial correlation, and carried out the linear regression analysis on the two data samples: one was of China from year 1980 to 2005, and the other was of 60 major countries in year 2005. The outcomes indicated that, even when excluding the factor of economic development, the higher one country’s globalization level, the higher its urbanization rate. In another word, the outputs have certified the existence of the positive correlation between the globalization and urbanization and have answered the first question successfully.Secondly, on one hand, the author discussed the influences of globalization upon the urbanization and the trend of urban development under such effect with the help of empirical and theoretical analyses in 6 aspects inclusive of point, surface, rate, city, countryside and populace; on the other hand, associated with the reality of China, the author discussed the transformation of China’s urbanization under the reciprocal impacts between globalization and urbanization in the following five aspects which consist of the function of urbanization, the export-oriented economy, the administrative divisions, the institutional arrangement and the farmer-turned workers. As a result, the aforesaid discussions have contributed to a more clear profile of this correlation between the globalization and urbanization, and at the same time have answered the second question favorably.Thirdly, the author selected nine typical countries or regions which include the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, India, Brazil, some post-socialism countries in East Europe, and the former USSR, and then compared their experiences in aspecto of urbanization and urban development, especially during the era from the end of World War II to present, the most rapid-growing period of globalization. The objective of comparasion is to find out the similarity and consistency behind. Consequently, the analyses not only certify most aforementioned arguments, but also provide us abundant references as well as trenchat lessons, while answering the third question.The last but not least, based on the successful resolutions of three main problems, and the reconstruction and combination of all above arguments, the author came up with the conclusion which illuminated that on one hand, globalization do influence the urban transition around the world, and thereby any urban planning or decision-making is unavailable and infeasible if ignoring or neglecting this point; on the other hand, as globalization becomes to be an unchangeable fact and an irreversible process, every country should face with and make use of this tendency in an active and positive perspective, and thereby realize a sustainable and healthy development and promotion of its own country.
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