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  • 2014 Volume 69 Issue 6
    Published: 20 June 2014
      

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  • FENG Zhiming, YANG Yanzhao, YOU Zhen, ZHANG Jinghua
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    The relationship between population distribution and resources, environment, social and economic development has attracted much attention for a long time. This paper set up an index system and some models for the assessment of the coordination between population and resources, environment, social and economic development. Then it used the index system and models to evaluate this coordination quantitatively at the county level. Based on this, the suitability and restriction of population distribution at the county level was graded and classified respectively, and its spatial and temporal patterns as well as regional characteristics were also revealed quantitatively. The results showed that: (1) population distribution was generally coordinated with human settlements environment in more than 3/5 of counties in China in 2010, which meant that population distribution was highly consistent with the natural suitability of human settlements environment at the county level; (2) population growth was merely not restricted by water and land resources in about half of counties in China in 2010, indicating that population distribution had medium coordination with the suitability of water and land resources; (3) population distribution was generally coordinated with social and economic development in more than 3/5 of counties in China in 2010, suggesting that population distribution was highly consistent with social and economic development; (4) the suitability degree of population distribution was larger than 60 in about 3/5 of counties in China in 2010, which showed that the relationship between population, resources, environment and development was coordinated or relatively coordinated; (5) as for the coordination between population, resources, environment and development at the county level, the eastern region was the best, the central region ranked second and the western region was the worst; (6) the suitability degree of population distribution at the county level could be identified into four grades, including basic coordination, relative coordination, under coordination and urgent need for coordination and 10 restricted classes.
  • LU Peng, TIAN Yan, CHEN Panpan, YAN Lijie, SONG Lisheng
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    Using overlay analysis and statistic analysis of GIS, this paper analyzes the distribution characteristics of 9000-3000 aBP settlements including Peiligang, Yangshao, Longshan and Xiashang periods, and the relationship between their regional tectonics and landforms around the Songshan Mountain. The results showed that there was a close relationship between regional tectonics and ancient settlement distribution. The tectonic movement profoundly affected the ups and downs of the landform and the steepness and plain of the terrain in this region. In addition, as the ancients preferred to take the plain terrain as the location of settlements, the ancient settlement distribution has a close relationship with regional tectonics. Controlled by the positive fault, the eastern part of the research region, the Huabei Depression and Songji Platform Uplift are characterized by overall uplift and depression. There were a lot of plain landform units in this region, such as block mountain, block hill, fault basin and plain. There were also many ancient settlements in this area, even at the top of the mountain and hill. Contrastively, there were mainly fold structure mountains controlled by fold at the edge of the research region like the Xiong'er Mountain, Waifang Mountain and Funiu Mountain where less plain terrains and fewer ancient settlements were found. The research implied that the relationship between ancient humans and natural environment looked like actor and stage. A variety of combinations of natural conditions formed different environmental base. And the human beings subjectively tended to choose the natural environment which is suitable for them to live in the economic development according to their cultural characteristics.
  • SUN Bindong, WEI Xuhong
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    The paper aims to generalize the characteristics and evolution of spatial structure in Shanghai Metropolitan Area, and also to compare the basic results with those of Beijing Metropolitan Area. To demonstrate the spatial evolution of both employment and population distribution in Shanghai, we have applied nonparametric methods to the analysis, which contains two perspectives of ‘agglomeration-dispersion’ and ‘monocentricity-polycentricity’. Our study has concluded that there is a continuous and evident dispersion in both population and employment distribution since the 1990s, and our study has identified the significant concentrated sub-centers in peripheral areas, which strengthened the polycentricity of the metropolitan area. As for Beijing, the overall trend of population evolution tends to be dispersed and polycentric, but the spatial distribution of employment is generally concentrated in central areas, which is contrary to the decentralization of population. According to our comparative analysis, the employment and population spatial distributions match better in Shanghai. We have also discussed about the reasons for different phenomena in Shanghai and Beijing. Differences of industrial structure between Beijing and Shanghai may be one of the most important causes for the employment distribution disparity, owing to the fact that Shanghai's manufacturing share is higher than Beijing's and the industrial dispersion helps promote the ability of absorbing employment in suburban areas and form the polycentric urban spatial structure. As for Beijing, service industry plays a significant role in recent years. Service industry often requires face-to-face communication, as a result, enterprises tend to form an agglomeration and reinforce the centralization, leading to a much more monocentric urban spatial structure. Meanwhile, in both Beijing and Shanghai, the population and employment sizes in central districts still matter a lot, which has already made some employment sub-centers not significant. Therefore, it is necessary for megacities to restrict the growth boundaries in central districts, so as to prevent inefficient spatial extension. Also, it is worthwhile to reinforce the agglomeration economies of sub-centers in peripheral areas to relieve the crowded effect in central areas.
  • WU Jiansheng, LIU Hao, PENG Jian, MA Lin
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    A perfect urban system can promote the urban agglomeration effect, and the prerequisite for urban system is that regional socio-economic development should actually reach a certain stage. Thanks to the strong correlation between the urban element flow and the mass of spatial units, the node system study in general should scientifically measure the interaction intensity among spatial units, and also avoid the difficulty that the vector data of the function system study is still hard to obtain and measure. As a special node system study data, DMSP/OLS nighttime light data can be used to measure urban human's activity intensity and activity breadth comprehensively, having a strong positive correlation with local GDP, population size, urbanization level and so on. So the urban nighttime light index can make a perfect combination between a single statistical index and a comprehensive index system. The gravity model based on DMSP/OLS nighttime light data is used to measure the interaction intensity among 341 cities in mainland China, and then the two step cluster analysis is made to analyze hierarchical structure and spatial pattern of mainland China urban system comprehensively. There are 7 national node cities (including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Harbin and Shenyang), 26 regional node cities and 107 provincial node cities in mainland China. Mainland China urban system are divided into 2 national urban systems (the northern national urban system and the southern national urban system) and 8 regional urban systems (North China urban system, Northeast China urban system, Northwest China urban system, Middle Yellow River urban system, and East China urban system, South China urban system, Southwest China urban system, Middle Yangtze River urban system), as well 31 provincial urban systems. Every urban system is closely linked, interdependently and interactionally, whose slope is relative and local area, and then some urban systems and many cities may be define accurately again, but the empirical study of hierarchical structure and spatial pattern of mainland China urban system evidenced from DMSP/OLS nightlight data is rather objective and compellent. All in all, to analyze hierarchical structure and spatial pattern of urban system based on DMSP/OLS nightlight data is obviously feasible and scientific.
  • WANG Fenglong, WANG Donggen
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    The increased private car ownership in China especially large cities has facilitated trip making and activity engagement behavior of citizens, but also led to many urban problems including traffic congestion and air pollution. While car ownership control has received much attention from academics and policy makers, not much research on private car usage in Chinese cities has been conducted. To fill in this gap, this paper examines the patterns and determinants of private car use in Beijing. Data are derived from an activitytravel behavior survey conducted in Beijing from November 2011 to July 2012. We develop econometric models from the data and find that the intensity of car usage in Beijing is significantly influenced by the purpose of car use, built environment variables and personal and household socioeconomic characteristics. Specifically, commuting is the most important purpose for car use in Beijing and the share of car use for this purpose is much higher than for other purposes; poor public transportation service and convenient parking facilities are two major driving forces of car use in Beijing; individual and household socioeconomic characteristics, such as marriage status, employment, household size and age, also play an important role. There is not much difference in frequency and duration of car usage between weekdays and weekends. These findings have important implications for transportation policymaking. Policies aiming at controlling car use may need to act on the factors that are found here as significant determinants of car use (e.g., built environment variables). It is argued that more studies on car use are required to better understand patterns and determinants of car use in Chinese cities and inform policies that can effectively reduce car use and alleviate car dependency.
  • LENG Zhiming, TANG Shan
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    The poverty of contiguous destitute areas is a special regional poverty. For the sake of alleviating this kind of poverty and promoting development persistently, to construct Regional Self-development Capacity (RSC) for these areas is very important and meaningful. But the urgent task is to investigate the status, constraints and spatio-temporal evolution of RSC in these contiguous destitute areas. This paper, taking the areas as a research object, firstly, views the RSC from medium level and considers it to be a complicated system which couples with industry capacity (IC), market capacity (MC), space capacity (SC) and soft power (SP). Then, taking Wuling Mountain Area as a typical example, the authors estimate RSC of all the counties in 2005, 2008 and 2011, and analyze their spatio-temporal evolution by using a multi-index comprehensive calculation method. The results showed that, (1) The RSC in the Wuling Mountain Area is generally low and uneven among the 7 subgroups. (2) The SC and SP are so weak that they constrain the promotion of RSC in the Wuling Mountain Area. (3) During 2005 to 2011, the spatial evolution characteristics can be concluded as "Declining in southeast and rising in north", and all of IC, MC, SC and SP have their own evolution trend.
  • LI Pingxing, CHEN Wen, SUN Wei
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    With the rapid economic development, social progress, and land use change in rural regions, rural territorial function and development orientation show more significant spatial differentiation and diversification. Using the well-developed Jiangsu province as a case, this paper quantitatively identified and calculated four rural territorial functions at county level, i.e., ecological conservation, agricultural production, industrial development and social security. Subsequently, the influencing factors of spatial differentiation on rural territorial functions for 63 regional units were analyzed; the dominated functions of each spatial unit were also identified. According to the case study, the multifunctional feature of rural territorial function was evident, however the function of industrial development was of significant dominance accompanying with the increase of dominant degree from northern to southern in Jiangsu province. The spatial agglomeration degrees of four rural territorial functions were low with variant agglomerative areas, that was, ecological conservation function was mainly distributed at coastal, surrounding lake and mountain areas, agricultural production function was mainly found in the northern and central parts, the industrial development function was predominately in the southern part, social security function which had the lowest spatial agglomeration was obviously distributed in municipal districts and their surrounding counties rather than other counties. The functional combinations of the 63 regional units were diversified and nine functional types were identified. Results of influencing factors analysis indicated that the natural geographical characteristics, spatial location, and economic development were the main influencing factors of differentiation on rural territorial functions, but their effects were of different intensities and directions for the spatial differentiation of four rural territorial functions. Specifically, the industry development function was mainly affected by road density, location advantage, FDI, GDP and floating population from other places; most factors were negatively related with the agricultural production function except the areas of important ecological function zones and cultivated lands; the relationships between the ecological conservation function and influencing factors were complicated, in which some more developed counties also had higher ecological conservation function; the social security function had very weak relationships with influencing factors owing to its complexity. This paper provided a scientific reference for identifying the rural development orientation, promoting the differential development, enhancing the characteristics and competitiveness of different counties; meanwhile, it was a meaningful supplement for the research of Major Function Oriented Zoning and related studies about territorial function.
  • GU Gaoxiang, WANG Zheng
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    Spatial structure is a basic component of regional science, and plays an important role in spatial interactions and regional economic development. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the development and evolution of China's spatial structure under different traffic systems and its influence on the regional economy and interactions, such as technology diffusion and capital flow. This information is important because we need to explore various measures to improve the imbalanced economic development in China. In this study, unlike in previous structure researches, an agent-based dynamic regional economic model is built from the perspective of bottom-up modeling. In this model, each prefecture-level city in China has been defined as a firm agent, and the Cobb-Douglas production function is adopted. Heterogeneous laborer agents with different technology levels move between firm agents. The laborer migration behavior is affected by Wilson spatial attenuation. The technologies diffuse with the process of laborer migration. Capital also moves between agents as an investment behavior of firms. Different types of roads are endowed with different weights to form a heterogeneous traffic network in this model. A simulation system is built to combine GIS components. Three scenarios are identified to account for the effects of the hierarchical traffic network and preferential tax policies on the evolution of Chinese regional structure. The simulated results indicate that the traditional center-hinterland diffusion mode is no longer appropriate under the impact of heterogeneous traffic network in reality. The technologies firstly diffuse from center cities to sub-hubs along the major traffic lines, following a hub-net diffusion structure, and later from sub-hubs to ordinary nodes located at the branch lines. This phenomenon can also be observed in the capital flow process, in which the capital hubs first interconnect and form a capital flow network along the major traffic roads. After that, the network extends to adjacent ordinary nodes. It is also demonstrated that traffic conditions are important for regional development and that the basic spatial lock-in created by the natural endowments still exists. A preferential tax policy can break such a spatial lock-in to a certain extent and will be conductive to attracting the immigration of laborers and improving the local technology level for less developed regions.
  • JI Feifei, CHEN Wen, WEI Yehua Dennis, YUAN Feng
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    Financial flow is a driving force to promote regional development and economic growth. Based on theories of new economic geography and financial geography, this article theoretically and empirically analyzes financial flows under an integrated framework of marketization, globalization, decentralization and integration. Through a study of the financial situation and financial transaction data including block trade, share transfer, related party transaction and transaction in assets of listed companies of the 16 cities in the Yangtze River Delta, this paper builds a financial flow network and measures its density and centrality. The results show that, although financial added value ratio and employee ratio slightly narrowed from 2002 to 2011, gaps between cities still exist, while links between these cities have become closer even expanded across provincial borders. The financial network density rises from 0.2250 to 0.4667, with more and more listed companies trading with or even distributing their subsidiaries to other cities. Shanghai, as a global financial center, along with other developed cities such as Nanjing, Hangzhou and Ningbo, intensifies financial flows and integrates the Yangtze River Delta with the global financial market. Meanwhile, other cities in this region are relatively marginalized from the competition. We used QAP network to analyze the driving forces and found that import and export, foreign direct investment, cultural diversity, foreign invested financial institutions and local policies play important roles in financial flows, while added value of financial rate and local revenue self-governing rate are not that important. The results also show that marketization is the most important driving force of financial flows. Although decentralization might sometimes restrict the flow of financial resource into smaller cities, together with globalization and marketization, it put financial resource flow into the broader region of the Yangtze River Delta. This paper discusses how to study financial diversity and financial flow from a geographical angle of view, which might inspire researchers in related field.
  • CHEN Jia, WEI Suqiong, CHEN Songlin
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    Using the data of TDI (Taiwan's direct investment) in the Chinese Mainland for recent 20 years, this article analyzes the changes in behavior, as well as the drive mechanism of TDI in the Chinese Mainland on two spatial scales. ESDA analysis model was adopted for analyzing the spatial pattern evolvement of TDI in the Chinese Mainland. The results show that since 1991, the scale of TDI, especially the amount scale, has risen significantly. The accumulative amount of TDI presents a T-shaped spatial pattern. The spatial distribution of TDI presents a spatial autocorrelation and a clear core-periphery-edge model. The hotspots spread towards north during the past 21 years, and are eventually concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta region. This article establishes a driving mechanism system by using grey relational analysis to examine the changes in evolution pattern as well as the driving mechanism of TDI. The major driving forces are communication development, regional market size, labor costs, electricity supply, policy environment, regional opening-up degree, and transportation infrastructure in the initial stage (1991-2000). The importance of TDI driving forces changed in the later stage (2001-2011), the main driving forces arranged in the order of importance are accumulation of prophase TDI, regional opening-up degree, regional market size, highly qualified labor force, labor costs, regional policy environment, electricity supply, and industrial agglomeration. Main driving forces differ in different economic zones, so the effects of cultural distances should not be neglected.
  • ZHAO Junzhu, SUN Tieshan, LI Guoping
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    Using the Chinese industrial enterprises database over the period 2001-2009, we analyze the spatial distribution of China's automobile manufacturing industry, by calculating the geographic concentration ratio and the EG index. We find the agglomeration level of China's automobile manufacturing industry has been falling over the period, and the motor vehicle parts manufacturing industry plays an essential role. To analyze the location choice of motor vehicle parts manufacturing start-ups, we build up the conditional logit model using the prefecture level data. The results indicate that: (1) unlike the U.S. and the European countries, the distributions of China's motor vehicle manufacturing firms and motor vehicle parts manufacturing firms are not spatially adjacent, (2) the motor vehicle parts manufacturing startups are labor intensive, which makes the industry's productivity and specialization inefficient, (3) not considering agglomeration economies, the market size and the local protectionism are positive and significant factors that influence the start-ups location choice. Due to all these factors, the specialization and the agglomeration level of China's automobile manufacturing industry is becoming lower.
  • SHI Peijun, WANG Ming, HU Xiaobing, YE Tao
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    Based on the concept of ‘consilience’ in integrated risk governance, this paper aims to develop scientific meanings of consilience in a systemic manner from the perspectives of fundamental principles, synergistic efficacy, operational means, and optimization process to improve a system's robustness to resist external disturbs. This paper proposed a new consilience mode for the purpose of complementing the existing theoretical system of integrated risk governance. The results presented in this paper show that the four proposed synergistic principles (tolerance, constraint, amplification and diversification) can well describe the characteristics of consilience in integrated risk governance of a socioecological system. The principles set four optimization goals in terms of ‘consenting in minds’ and ‘gathering in force’ in the consilience theory. The consilience mode demonstrates how the synergistic principles and their optimization goals are converted into a series of tasks including the popularization of social perception, the rationalization of cost allocation, the systemization of optimization and the maximization of cost benefit. With implementation of all these tasks, the consensus and social welfare can be maximized while the cost and risk can be minimized in the integrated risk governance of the socio-ecological system. The modeling and simulation results show that a complex network system's robustness can be improved with increased system consilience when facing local or global disturbs. Moreover, this kind of improvement can be achieved by optimizing the structure and function of nodes in a socio-ecological system. The consilience mode also complements current disaster system theory in which the concepts of vulnerability, resilience and adaptation may face limitation of addressing integrated risk governance problems in a socio-ecological system.