Abstract:

In the context of the new era, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to promote urban-rural integrated development and rural revitalization by exploring the evolution paths and the driving mechanism of the urban-rural scale system. In this paper, we examined the evolution paths and the driving mechanism of this system at the county level based on both the land change survey data and remote sensing data in 1995 and 2015, when taking three counties of Jiangsu province as an example, namely developed Zhangjiagang, moderately-developed Taixing, and less-developed Lianshui at different levels of economic development. Based on the empirical study, in this paper, three typical evolution paths of the urban-rural scale system at the county level in Jiangsu province were summarized, and they fell into three types: Developed County, Moderately Developed County, and Less Developed County. In this case, some conclusions can be drawn as follows: (1) the number of settlements in the county decreased, but the total size increased; (2) the total size of rural settlements decreased, and the size of cities and towns increased at different speeds, when the town size gradually exceeded the urban size; (3) the number and the built-up area of high grade settlements increased, while those of low grade settlements decreased; (4) the polarization feature of the county's development became increasingly significant before gradually becoming weak; (5) the characteristics of the spatial cluster concerning the urban-rural scale system became increasingly significant, and the number of hot-points increased in the county area; (6) urban and rural construction land constantly expanded, when Chengguan town and key towns experienced the main change; (7) the spatial pattern of the urban-rural scale system evolved from the single center to double centers, and then to multi-centers. Furthermore, there were two common characteristics, namely urban-dominant effect and clumped-distributive effect, in the developing process of the urban-rural scale system in different counties. Then, based on the analysis of the key influencing factors, in this paper, the driving mechanism of the urban-rural scale system at the county level was put forward. In this study, economic growth, urbanization, transport network, and institutional management stand for four ways to propel progress. They are like the four wheels of a car, reinforcing and depending on one another and forming an integrated whole, in which the urban-rural settlement system constantly evolves.

Key words: urban-rural scale system, evolution paths, driving mechanism, county level, Jiangsu