In the new round of urbanization, the innovation economy with human capital as the core has gradually become the engine of driving economic growth, the important function of the provincial central city as a population gathering place is increasingly prominent. The tendency of the floating population affects the reconstruction of the urban system between cities of different scales and administrative grades, the core subject of studying population change plays an important role in the process of urbanization. Therefore, this paper selects typical cities in each province as the objects, estimated by the latest data of urban population, revealing the recent development trend of China’s urbanization and the changing pattern of metropolitan regional structure. Found from it, in recent years, the development trend of China's population urbanization has gradually stabilized, and there are still significant differences in population agglomeration in different regions and cities of different scales, all kinds of municipalities directly under the central government, provincial capitals, and sub-provincial cities have outstanding performance in population agglomeration, the population attractiveness of traditional port cities, industrial cities, and provincial sub-central cities is gradually weakening. Among them, the absorption capacity of the first-tier cities is super strong, the secondary cities become important gathering places for the population, the population growth rate of the third-tier cities is slowing down, the population of the fourth-tier cities is stable, and the cities can be divided into four different combinations. They are “high/low scale” and “high/low growth”. At the same time, the growth of urban population will directly affect the economic development of urban areas, in particular, the central and central cities in the central and western regions have become more powerful and have a strong population growth, which has changed the pattern of the traditional East, Central and West regions, the provincial capital city showed four different combinations of “high/low order” and “high/low concentration”, and the provincial capitals were concentrated in two types: “high order, high concentration” and “low order, low concentration”, the pattern of differentiation is relatively obvious. With the continuous development of China's metropolis, it has gradually become a leader in the new era of innovation economy and population agglomeration. The higher the administrative level, the more obvious the advantage of resource allocation. China's metropolis has the advantage of attracting population agglomeration, thereby further enriches the urban labor market and making it more advantageous in economic development.Thereby continuously consolidating the important position of the metropolis in China's urban system. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the characteristics of urban population structure changes, so as to more effectively adopt relevant policy measures, rationally guide and plan the public service planning for different types of urban population.
