As a basis of counting urban population, the correct urban-rural division is an important component in collecting, classifying and analysing socio-economic statistics. Research on urban and rural area division method has the vital significance both in theory and practice. Using Shanghai 2000 aerial remote sensing photographs and the Population Geographical Information System, this paper makes an experimental division of urban and rural areas. Detailed division method discussion has been made for three kinds of urbanized area, i.e., Shanghai city proper, the suburban Qingpu District and outer suburban Zhangyan town of Jinshan District, for the purpose of simulating regional division of the metropolitan, urban and town areas separately. It firstly introduces the basic division processes of the three types of urban and rural areas. Then it conducts a comparative study on different precision results of each type of the areas. Finally the authors discuss the three types of urbanized area divisions for metropolises, medium- and small-sized cities as well as towns in terms of precision to be reached in the near- and long-term respectively. Appropriate precision and simple operation is the focus of this research, which aims at promoting the urbanized area division work in a wide range.
Globalization and the new economy have had a profound impact on the formation and evolution of the urban spatial structure. Based on statistical data and fieldwork, this paper analyzes urban spatial restructuring in Guangzhou and develops an evolutionary model of urban development. The study has uncovered that the evolution of Guangzhou City is a gradual process characterized by four stages of evolving urban spatial forms: the single-core growth pattern, the Wikilib pattern, the dual structure pattern and the multi-core networking pattern. Currently, Guangzhou City is in the development stage of the dual structure pattern, with obvious differentials in economic structure, urban landscape and population structure between the old city and new urban areas. Such a spatial structure in Guangzhou results from various underlying factors, mainly globalization and the new economy, institutional change, local policies and urban planning. Globalization and the new economy have been playing a vital role in urban spatial restructuring in Guangzhou. The analysis of urban spatial restructuring in Guangzhou has significant implications for the study of metropolitan restructuring in China.
This article analyses the image of microspace scene and macrospace structure of Dalian by questionnaire, photo recognition and cognitive mapping. We also use factor analysis to make a study on what kind of microspace is preferred by people. Meanwhile means test and anova analysis are used to study the impact of age, sex and education background on the personally recognized number of photos and the scope of image of the city. Hence we conclude that Dalian is able to be highly imaged as integration, and the most imageable areas are concentrated in the center of the city, plazas and beauty spots. The image of microspace scene is affected by its function, areas, users, circumjacent environment and architecture noumenon. The image of macrospace structure is a framework which is upheld by road and with the residential and business areas as its background. This framework is dotted with population distributing center and the buildings with certain features. As is affected by age, sex and education background, the image area in different person's minds shares different sizes. Based on the findings and conclusions some suggestions are made for the urban planning and tour planning of Dalian.
The institutional preconditions, behavior bases and the relationship between finance and urban space development have been emphasized when people pay more attention to the spatial dimension of urban finance during the progress of tertiarisation. The case studies on the change of spatial pattern of financial industry (SPFI) at the urban scale are scarce in China. Based on the second-hand data from 'the tertiary industry census'(1984), 'the basic units census'(1996, 2001), other socio-economic statistics and the first-hand data from field survey, this paper investigated the progress and causes of the change of SPFI during the transition period by using a set of combined methods, such as comparison, description and interpretation, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show that: (1) There are two co-existing processes of the movement of the financial service industry during the transition period, including concentrating in the central districts from periphery districts and spreading to the new districts from the central districts. The initial spatial pattern as 'highly concentrating in Yuexiu District' has transformed to the current pattern as 'multi-spot concentrating in the central districts'. The generation of financial service industry comparatively agglomerative spots showed a 'South to North, and West to East' spatio-temporal movement process. (2) The systematic transition of socio-economic institutions and the evolvement of financial regulations were the preconditions of the variation of spatial pattern of financial service industry. The behavior of financial institutions was the micro-behavior base. And the expansion of urban space was the spatial tensile force. The economic effect of urbanization agglomeration widened the differentiation in financial service industry in each administrative division. The construction of office buildings in turn in an agglomerative form attracted the financial institutions to cluster at certain spots. (3) Dissimilar to the conditions of the cities of the Western countries, the headquarters location centre of high order financial services did not exist in Guangzhou, neither obvious decline of CBD nor 'abandoned' urban space could be discerned during the research period in Guangzhou.
Based on the quantitative model and GIS method, this paper analyses the airports' spatial distribution, service coverage and air passengers flow in China. The result shows that Chinese airport system is imbalance in space and its structure is also unreasonable, which resulted in different spatial service levels, basically in accordance with Chinese economic pattern. Meanwhile, the air passengers flow is obviously agglomerated to the eastern coastal region, and its spatial connection and extension has the characteristics of hierarchy, which also shows some hub-and-spoke characteristics. The authors also find that Chinese airport system presents a "triangular balance pattern" spatial system with "Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou" as its centers, which will keep for a long time. Finally, the research shows that distribution of airport system is related to national or regional urban system. Therefore, with the rapid development of air travel, the regional distribution of new airports should be balanced and airport network and hierarchy system be optimized in future in China so as to induce a sound evolvement of the whole aviation network.
Along with the highly speedy urbanization and industrialization in the developed area in China, the sprawl of land use has led to the development disorder and difficulties in natural ecology and agricultural land protection, which will threaten the regional sustainability. However, the regionalization based on ecological-economic approach amphasizes that regions with low development cost, high carrying capacity of resources and environment as well as great development ability should undertake social and economic activities with great intensity; whereas those regions having high ecological values but are difficult to be developed should maintain fuctions of agriculture and ecology, so as to promote the harmonious interrelations among economy, population, resources and environment with spatial order. Referred to the existing regionalization, this paper discusses how to divide the assessed units, choose and manage the assessed elements etc. on the basis of traditional regionalization. The classification matrix has been applied for integrating the ecological significant value and economic significant value. As a case study, Suzhou city is divided into four types, i.e., preferential development area, feasible development area, moderate conservation area and prohibited exploiting area. Finally, this paper analyses the main function regionalization method and the policy guarantee of management at different areas.
Northeast China is an important base to the national food security. There are more problems in achieving optimal allocation of land and water resources as well as sustainable utilization. At present water resources shortage and land degradation are the two most important factors restricting agricultural sustainable development in Northeast China. Improving the matching degree of land and water resources and guaranteeing supplement level of irrigated water resources have becoming long-term goals to promote the high-efficient utilization of agricultural resources and upgrade the comprehensive productivity of food. The matching coefficient of land and water resources (Ri), which is an indicator to reflect the proportion of water supply and cultivated land resources in spatio-temporal scale in a specific zone. The purpose of using this indicator is to investigate the balance between water supply and land resources in temporal and spatial distributions and their corresponding matching degree. Based on the dynamic analysis of gross land and water resources and their matching degree in Northeast China, this paper establishes a matching model of agricultural water and land resources. Simulation analyses indicate that the matching degree of land and water resources in Northeast China is not as good as expected, and there are distinct differences among this region. Northeast China, which possesses 16.68% of the total cultivated land in the whole country, only takes up 4.01% of the total water resources. In average, the per capita cultivated land in Northeast China is 0.309 hm2, three times that of the whole country. However, the per capita water resource in Northeast China is 1042 m3, which is only 47.7% of the whole country. The matching coefficient is 1.153, which is lower than the whole country (1.441). According to different values of Ri, the matching degree of water and land resources in Northeast China is classified into 5 grades: excellent (0.73 < Ri ≤ 11.73), better (0.23 < Ri ≤ 0.73), moderate (0.16 < Ri ≤ 0.23), worse (0.13 ≤ Ri ≤ 0.16) and worst (0 < Ri < 0.13). Accordingly, the basic approach of enhancing the matching degree of land and water resources is to construct water conservancy projects in Northeast China. Attention should be paid to large-scale water transportation projects like "North to South Water Transfer Project", supplemented by midium- and small-scale water conservancy projects. Moreover, development of high-efficiency, water-saving modern agriculture with well-trench irrigation system should be strengthened as well.
The artificial oases are the main places for human activities in arid zones. Oasis management and ecological construction embody the active action of human activities, while irrational land development and economic activities exert excessive pressure and form ecological load on the existence and sustainable development of oases. Scientifically and precisely giving an integrated evaluation on the states of oases is an important prerequisite for people to correctly understand oases and launch ecological construction and environmental protection projects. In view of the facts that the evaluation indicators of oases in China are simple and they are only used in limited regions at present, this paper presents an universal evaluation indicator system of oases in inland river basins based on the "oasis maturity" obtained by factor analytical method and with the 15 oases in Hexi Corridor as study objects conducts the case analyses. The results show that in accordance with the integrated evaluation values of the maturity, the oases in the Hexi Corridor can be divided into four classes, namely industrial oasis, highly developed agricultural oasis, moderately developed agricultural oasis and degraded or lowly developed agricultural oasis. Such a classification is entirely consistent with local situation. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of various oasis are quantitatively expressed using the indicators of maturity at factorial level, and thus provide a concise and scientific basis for the oasis managers and policy-makers to manage oasis.
Adopted with Holdridge Life Zone Model (HLZM), Weight Centre Model (WCM) and Land Use Degree Model (LUDM), climate data of China in recent 20 years and 2-period LUCC data covering China are used to analyze the impact degree and direction of changes caused by climatic changes and human activities to China vegetation covers and land use. In recent 20 years, the rise in temperature and increase in precipitation in most parts of China have influenced not only China's biome, but also growth conditions of Holdridge life zone deeply. In this period, variations in both precipitation and temperature in Northeast China, North China and the Inner Mongolia Plateau have improved living environment and led to the transformation of Nature Covered Ecological Type from unutilized land to grassland and shrubland types, grassland and shrubland types transformed to forest and arable land. Meanwhile, China's economic development in recent 20 years, as well as land use increment in rural and urban areas for construction and transportation purposes in eastern coastal zones have made Land Use Type developed from farmland to construction land, leading to increase in land use degree index. Thereby the dual impacts by climatic changes and economic development resulted in a shift of Land Use Degree Weight Centre northeastward by 54 km. With regard to Land Use Degree Excursion Intensity, in east-west direction, 81% is caused by climatic changes and 19% by anthropogenic impacts; while in north-south direction, 85% is caused by climatic changes and 15% by anthropogenic impacts.
The pattern of land cover in Guangzhou city was translated from remote sensing image of SPOT. Two transects of north-south (N/S) and west-east (W/E) were set at the cross point which was the center of Guangzhou. Landscape diversity was selected as an index to describe the abundance of landscape. Four kinds of different extents were chosen to calculate the indices, such as 125 m, 250 m, 500 m and 1000 m. All those calculations were performed with Fortran programs under moving square windows of corresponding extents. The moving windows were sampled along the transects from west to east and from north to south with the step of a moving window size. Based on the calculation of diversity index, coefficients Moran I and Geary C and function of semi-variance were counted at different extents for correlativity of landscape diversity of urban land cover. Then, the two transects were partitioned by equal distance of the small width of the transects, 8000 m. A series of sample units with equal area were formed along the two transects. Scale variances were figured out for each unit based on the indices of landscape diversity. It was carried out at four extents. The scale variance of each transect was an average of all units in the same transect. The results revealed that there was a positively spatial autocorrelation between landscape diversities under different extents and the two transects had different spatial heterogeneities of landscape. Besides internal factors, variances of spatial structure of land cover in the two transects were affected by human activities directly. Different rates of factors formed different spatial heterogeneities of landscape of urban land cover. The semi-variance curve of diversity index was not different obviously with the increasing extents at N/S transect, but it was obvious at W/E transect. The rate of Co/(Co + C) increased monotonously, indicating that the impact of stochastic factors on landscape diversity increased with the increase of research extent. The scale variance of landscape of land cover in the moving windows along the two transects under different extents decreased with the increase of scales, and all scale variances went to be almost similar at a large extent of 1000 m. The values of scale variances were obviously relative to spatially geometrical shape. The scale variance of landscape was bigger when spatial shape of sample units was a rectangle in contrast to the shape of a square. The spatial heterogeneity of landscape in the two transects was not only relative to the direction of transect, but also relative to the extent. The scale variance did not monotonously change from small extent to large extent, such as extents of 125 m and 250 m, the change of scale variance decreased with the increase of extent. Analysis of scale variance showed that there was a multi-scale hierachical structure of land cover, but it was different between the N/S and W/E transects. The heterogeneity was higher in the W/E transect than in the N/S transect. In a word, the scale variance and function of semi-variance are appropriate methods to study spatial heterogeneity and hierachical structure of landscape of urban land cover with changes in scale and extent.
This paper presents a new method to simulate complex land use systems by integrating rough sets (RS), cellular automata, and GIS. Recently, cellular automata (CA) have been increasingly used to simulate urban growth and land use dynamics. Traditional CA models simulate urban development with static transition rules in large areas. Most of them are expressed by mathematical formulas and the transition rules are fixed. These models have limitations to simulate complex land use change. The transition rules should be subject to uncertainties and they should vary spatially. In this study, a CA model based on rough sets is developed using Visual Basic and ArcObjects of GIS. The GIS provides both data and spatial analysis functions for constructing RS-CA model. Training data are conveniently retrieved from remote sensing and GIS database for calibrating and testing the model. The rough sets method is used to obtain the uncertainty and dynamic transition rules. The RS-CA model can be applied to the simulation of urban development. Complex global patterns can be generated from the local interactions with the RS-CA model. This paper demonstrates that the proposed model can overcome some of the shortcomings of the existing CA models in simulating complex urban systems by using the rough set method. The model has been successfully applied to the simulation of urban development in Shenzhen city of the Pearl River Delta.
