New Special Development Zones (NSDZs) have become a distinctive, popular, significant urban development model, also been an activator of urban transformation, in China's opening and reform era. Taking the city of Xi'an as a case, through analyzing the NSDZs' particular operation mechanisms and structural features, such as their privileged status as "special policy districts", their competitive economic structure as "new economy" space, and their strategies of commercial housing development together with industrial development, the impacts of NSDZs on the ongoing socio-economic polarization of Chinese cities are underlined and discussed in this paper based on a variety of data sources and from a multi-dimensional perspective. The empirical results in Xi'an show that: (1) Because of the more favorable conditions and milieu created by the "special policy district" treatment, the NSDZs have become the major attraction to the construction of the capital and other investments, with the results that the NSDZs, compared with the "normal" areas in the city, have generally experienced a much faster economic growth as well as spatial expansion with more advanced infrastructure and better quality of built-environment. These make the NSDZs economically and physically outstanding from the rest part of the city. (2) The NSDZs have become the most concentrated area of knowledge-based, technology-intensive, world-market-related "new economies". This advantage of economic structure has not only become another reason for NSDZs' rapid economic growth, but also made the NSDZs special social areas with an obviously higher proportion of well-educated and highly-paid people. (3) The comparatively better quality of living environment and higher price of commercial housing developed in NSDZs have made the NSDZs a special new residential area of 'purer' private-property owners, and accordingly, more wealthy residents. Along with this, an income-based residential segregation is becoming manifest in the city. (4) In contrast to the above processes, the old areas (especially the old industrial sections) of the city have relatively fallen backward because of less investment, less productivity, less "new economies", and more low-income people. The spatial disparity within the city is therefore increasing. These facts indicate that the polarization of urban socio-economic space has been intensified with the rise of NSDZs. The findings and arguments of this research will be helpful for a better understanding and evaluation of the NSDZs-dominated urban development model existing in many Chinese cities.
The polycentric Mega-City Regions (MCR) have arisen through a long process of very extended decentralization from big central cities to new or adjacent smaller ones. It is an emergent urban phenomenon in the course of formation at the beginning of the 21st century. The concept of MCR emphasizes the role of the regions with one or more global cities (or world cities) in the globalization process, and considers that the knowledge-intensive producer service business operations and flows are associated with a polycentric pattern of urban development in each MCR. Recently, some new trends and characteristics have risen in the development of cities and towns in the Yangtze River Delta that has been the biggest economic core region of China. It is now universally accepted that Shanghai would become a global city in the context of the Yangtze River Delta and the Metropolitan Interlocking Region with the core of Shanghai being evolving into a Mega-City Region. This paper explores the concept and characteristics of Mega-City Regions, and provides a research on characteristics of the Yangtze River Delta Mega-City Region, which is defined in terms of contiguous FURs. The polycentricity of the MCR is measured by both rank size analysis and functional polycentric analysis. The MCR's functional characteristics are investigated by measuring functional connections between 16 main FURs, and their network characteristics are reflected by highway and railway networks and intra-regional producer service linkages. Further, the polycentricity is measured again by analyzing the network of functional linkages. And it is found that Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi and Hangzhou are the four main centers of the MCR. This finding may have some differences between the previous rank size analysis and functional polycentric analysis. Finally, it concluded that the Yangtze River Delta Mega-City Region that has 55 contiguous FURs with a population of more than 80 million and an area of 78,000 km2 is a polycentric network city region.
Since the 1990s, commercial conditions in China including commercial environment, retail types, scale of retail enterprises, spatial structure of retail and shopping decision-making factors have changed. In order to keep up with these changes, commercial geography should set up new perspectives, theories and methods to analyze its internal mechanism and changing rules, and thus provide reasonable and practical scientific basis to commercial planning, location decision of retail enterprises and commercial environment construction. Taking Xicheng and Haidian Central Districts of Beijing as a research case, which is a sector region from city center to rural area, this paper selects 12 commercial centers as most important study objects of this sector. On the basis of the data from 1300 residents' questionnaires, the paper empirically analyzes the residents' shopping location preference and shopping location choice in two Logit models. Empirical results show that shopping behavior of residents is significantly and positively related to working in high-tech companies, high income and by car and is negatively related to high school diploma, by bus and subway. Furthermore, the residents' shopping location decision is significantly and positively related to leisure establishment and relative restaurant and entertainment establishment and negatively related to commercial location, commodity price, service quality and parking site. These empirical findings have important policy implications and marketing for policy-makers and retail developers.
This paper firstly analyzes Guangzhou social area structure in 2000, and then compares the results with the structures in 1985. Its purpose is to study the social area change law of Guangzhou during economic system transformation, and to conclude the general social structure model of metropolis in China. On the basis of Principal Components Analysis and Hierarchical Cluster Methods, this paper processes more than 200 variables related to the social area structure from the fifth census data of 2000, and gets 5 key factors of "the degrees of population density", "the education level and occupation", "family status and the proportion of farmer population", "the proportion out of work", "the quality of apartment" who influence Guangzhou social area structure, and divides Guangzhou city into 7 kinds of social areas, that is "the densely populated, crowded old city area", "the residential area of medium-sized income stratum", "the residential area of salary stratum", "the residential area of the intellectual, advanced job person", "the mixed residential area of the migrant and local people", "the urbanized residential area in the suburbs", and "the farmer residential area". After comparison with the social area pattern of Guangzhou in 1985, this paper finds that Guangzhou social area has the following changes from 1985 to 2000: (1) the main factor influencing social area change is still "urbanization" although the importance of "social status" is getting high; (2) the social area structures get more complex, and the income gap and migrant population play a more important role in the formation of social areas; (3) and the three change patterns of Guangzhou social areas are concluded, that is the change pattern based on old city area, the one based on manufacture or university enclave and the one based on farmer social area. Finally, this paper analyzes the mechanism of the social area change from the point of view of national policy change during the economic transition, the history of city growth and the planning control of the government, then outlines the pattern of social spatial structure of China's cities during the period of economic transition, explains the differences of social area structures in China and in Western countries, and predicts the future changes of Guangzhou social areas based on occupation splitting up, family life cycle and migrant population.
The facility distribution is a hot issue in the urban layout, in which the representative Weber facility location is widely applied. Weber facility location can collocate the facility the best position in a discrete space and may solve location problem of various facilities. From the point of view of geocomputation, it can be divided into free facility location issue and restrained facility location issue depending on whether the facility orientation scope is restricted, namely whether the space network architecture is considered. It can also be divided into spatial damping and spatial no damping depending on whether it will have mutual effects among spatial geographical entities because of the distance. Based on different classifications, the Multiple Centers-of-gravity model, the Benefit Maximizing model and the p-center model are selected as the examples and computational methods in this study. In view of Integration and Development, the visual development kit Delphi 7.0 is generated as the development platform using specialized GIS widget MapObjects based on the OCX technology and the analysis system of the facility location is established to realize the computation and geographic analysis function of each model. And taking the social enterprise development of Xinqiao county and Songjiang district of Shanghai as an example, utilizing this system, the location problem of facility corresponding to the social enterprises development is solved. The analysis and computation of various distributions of the commune hospitals, the senior-citizen universities and the police workstations fully manifest that the research conclusion can provide a quantitative policy-making basis for reasonable distribution of infrastructural construction.
Based on the highway network map in 1986, 1994 and 2005, choosing weighted mean travel time as indicator, the spatial structure and evolution of major cities highway accessibility in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) are elaborated in this paper. Considering the characteristics of highway transportation, the impact of accessibility level on city development is also analyzed preliminarily. Some conclusions are drawn as follows. In the 20 years, the spatial structure of accessibility in the YRD has little change; Shanghai, Suzhou and Jiaxing are the center with the lowest accessibility value, and the value increases from the center to the surrounding. The improvement of highway system upgrades the accessibility of major cities in this region, but the evolution takes on different characteristics in the two research stages, and the accessibility upgrade in the second stage (1994-2005) is greater than that in the first stage (1986-1994). The changing extent of accessibility value is related to the initial value, and changing rate of accessibility value decreases from the northern part to the southern at the first stage, but takes on multi-core pattern at the second stage. With the improvement of highway system, the accessibility optimizes from the center to the surrounding. Most cities in this region are above the average level in accessibility, and the city relative accessibility has changed less at the first stage but more at the second stage. Standard deviation analysis of accessibility coefficient shows that the equilibrium of the accessibility distribution descends at the first stage and ascends at the second stage. Considering the highway freight local quotient, the impact of accessibility level on the city development is classified into three categories: promotion, restriction and adaptation. With these results, some suggestions about the development of highway system in this region and some foci for further study are proposed.
Based on the results of the first land use survey in Tibet Autonomous Region carried out in the late 1980s, land use map of Lhasa area in 1990 was compiled for the main agricultural area in Lhasa valley using aerial photos obtained in April, May and October 1991 and Landsat imagery in the late 1980s and 1991 as remotely sensed data sources. Using these remotely sensed data, the land use status of Lhasa area in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1999 and 2000 were mapped through updating annual changes of cultivated land, artificial forest, grass planting, grassland restoration and residential area and so on. According to land use status of Lhasa area in 1990, 1995 and 2000 at five-year intervals, the spatial and temporal land use dynamics in Lhasa area from 1990 to 2000 are further analyzed using GIS spatial models in this paper. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Land use change in Lhasa area during the period 1990-2000 happened mainly near the major towns and the Lhasa valley. Much natural vegetation was replaced by artificial forests; vegetation coverage and biomass have obviously increased. These changes are directly related to human activities aiming to improve regional environment, such as tree planting, grassland restoration during the implementation of the integrated agricultural development project at that time. (2) The most remarkable increase in area is forest as the forestland increased by 2.556% (2713.48 hm2) from 1990 to 2000. The most comprehensive changes of land use in Lhasa area from 1990 to 2000 is rangeland conversion. Rangeland was converted to cultivated land, horticultural land, forestland, settlement and water body. Among them, the largest area of land use changes is rangeland conversion to forestland (2338.25 hm2), being 94.093% of the area relating to land use change. Some 186.53 hm2 of cultivated land have been converted to forestland over the period 1990-2000, being 54.857% of the total area relating to cultivated land conversion into other land use types. Some water bodies changed into cultivated land, forests and rangeland. Some 243.13 hm2 of water body were converted to forests, being 93.126% of the area relating to land use change, which happened mainly from the bottomland conversion to the artificial forests. (3) Because Lhasa area is a semi-arid and environmentally vulnerable region on the Tibetan Plateau, effective measures should be taken to improve local environment in a short term through bioengineering technologies such as artificial forestation, grassland restoration and so on. These measures can improve local microclimate, conserve water, prevent land desertification and soil and water loss through modifying vegetation cover types and increasing vegetation coverage.
The basic cause of continuous cultivated land conversion is the comparatively low benefit of its agricultural use. Therefore, the main approaches to establishing the conservation mechanism of cultivated land are to heighten the comparative income of agricultural use of cultivated land on the one hand, and to enhance the cost of cultivated land conversion on the other hand. The two approaches are summarized into the re-evaluation of cultivated land resource. This article argues that cultivated land resource is actually provided with economic output value, ecological service value and social guarantee value, and all of them can be re-evaluated by market price respectively. The economic output value of cultivated land is the quotient of its annual benefit divided by discount rate. The ecological service value of cultivated land is the quotient of its annual ecosystem service value divided by discount rate. The social guarantee value of cultivated land is the sum of its provisions of endowment insurance for the aged and of guarantee for employment. Three cases representing various environmental conditions and social development levels are studied respectively in the article so as to reveal the regional differentiation among the east, the middle and the west of China. They are Chao'an county of Guangdong Province, Huaiyang county of Henan Province and Huining county of Gansu Province. The results show that the values of cultivated land resource are obviously different among the three case areas and present the higher feature in the east and the lower in the west. Regarding the composition of values of cultivated land resource, social value makes up more than 60% of the total in all of the three areas. Yet the proportion of social value is higher in the west and lower in the east, demonstrating that the dependent degree of peasant upon cultivated land resource reversely relates with the level of socio-economic development. The proportion of economic output value to the total value is higher in the east and lower in the west, showing the difference of productivity resulted from natural and economical conditions. The proportion of ecological service value to the total value is higher in the west and lower in the east, because the ecosystem of the west is simpler so that the farmland ecosystem is relatively more important in the western eco-environment. Agricultural land use provides a huge amount of exterior benefit for the society. This can become an important reason for practicing agricultural subsidies, and also become a basis for calculating the amount of subsidies. Moreover, this should be used as a basis for enhancing the compensation of levied cultivated land. In the present period in China, cultivated land serves as the major resource livelihood for majority of the farmers. Under the conditions of faultiness and even absence of rural social guarantee system, the social guarantee value of cultivated land could not be ignored.
This paper develops a theoretical framework for rural housing land transition in China. Land use transition refers to the changes in land-use morphology over time, and it usually corresponds to a particular socio-economic development phase. Land use transition is also one of the major research contents of Global Land Project (GLP), a joint research agenda of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) to improve the understanding of land system dynamics. Although our understanding of land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) has improved through carrying out a lot of studies on land system, it seems that LUCC research still remains under-theorized. Research on land use transition needs new methods to incorporate the historical aspects and timescales of social and environmental changes. The discipline which in principle should be most able to meet the demands is geography. There is tremendous scope for this kind of study, which needs the knowledge concerning physical geography as well as human geography. By understanding the change process of rural housing in China, theoretical hypothesis on rural housing land transition was put forward. It is assumed that rural housing in China will undergo specific stages-the proportion of rural housing in the increase of total construction land will decline gradually with the development of the local economy, and the end of the transition corresponds to a kind of equilibrium between rural housing and other construction activities. Henceforth, the research results of rural housing land transition in the transect of the Yangtze River were used to verify the above hypothesis.
This paper proposes a new method to simulate development plans based on the integration of multi-agent systems (MAS) and cellular automata (CA). The proposed model consists of three related components, i.e., multi-agent systems, cellular automata (CA) and GIS. The mechanism to achieve spatial and temporal efficiency in using land resources is implemented according to the theories of environmental economics and sustainable development. This scheme is helpful for promoting sustainable use of land resources in fast growing regions. The proposed model is applied to the simulation of land use dynamics in the Haizhu district of Guangzhou in 1995-2010. The model is able to simulate various planning scenarios and provide a spatial exploratory tool for planning purposes.
The Yuzixi Catchment is located in the core of the Panda Natural Reserves in western Sichuan Province, with an area of 1742 km2. Due to influences of climate change and human activities, the land cover shows marked changes in the last decade. Using the land-cover data obtained from the remote sensing images of two years of 1986 and 1994, this paper developed two models based on the Markov Chain and Patch-dynamics approach, to simulate land-cover changes in the Yuzixi Catchment. Both models were verified using the land-cover data in 2002. Starting from the year 1994, the land-cover of the year 2002 was simulated in a time-step of 1 year and 8 years with these two models, respectively. Compared with the real land-cover data in 2002, it was found that the time scale had a marked effect on the simulation results, and the simulation error varied among different land use types. The simulation error of Patch-dynamics model of cultivated land (-8.2%/-5.6%), forest land (-0.5%/-0.4%), grassland (0.7%/0.4%) and residential area (-29.9%/-16.4%) is bigger based on one-year scale than eight-year scale, and their changing trends are unstable due to the significant effect of anthropogenic factors. By contrast, the simulation error of bush land (-1.5%/-1.7%) and ice land (27.3%/41.9%) is smaller based on one-year scale than eight-year scale, and the changing trends are stable because they are mostly affected by natural factors. The research results also show that the simulation results of Markov Chain model are similar to that of Patch-dynamics model. However, the simulation results of Patch-dynamics model are more stable and reliable.
