The "National New Urbanization Planning (2014-2020)" (hereinafter referred to as "Planning") marks a significant transformation in China's urbanization development process, with the core of human urbanization, and the general requirement of seeking advance in stability. This paper elaborates the authors' preliminary thoughts on the formation of the "Planning" mainly from the speed and quality aspects of the urbanization development. Urbanization level should be consistent with industrial restructuring, the amount of new jobs, the actual ability of absorbing rural population, and water-soil resource and environment capacity of the urban area, etc. The large scale and high speed urbanization development in China has resulted in severe environment pollution, great pressures on the infrastructure, and huge challenge to the supporting capacity of natural resources. Urbanization is an important frontier scientific issue with obvious cross disciplinary feature, which is also a complex system. The interdisciplinary human economic geography has outstanding advantages and solid research foundation in the field of urbanization research. Therefore, facing the significant realistic demand of the national new urbanization, we should do some in-depth research and tracking studies in this field.
Major Function Oriented Zoning (MFOZ) is the blueprint for the future developmnt and protection pattern of China's territory, and has been raised to from major function zones planning to major function zoning strategy and major function zoning institution. From 2004 to 2014, the author organized a series of research projects to compose MFOZ for the country, studied basic theory of regional function and MFOZ technical process, and proposed that space controlling zones of national and provincial scales can be divided into four types: urbanized zones, foodstuff-security zones, ecological safety zones, cultural and natural heritage zones. On this basis, major function zones of county scale should be transferred to optimized, prioritized, restricted, and prohibited zones. In this paper, a regional function identification index system comprising nine quantitative indicators (including water resources, land resources, ecological importance, ecological fragility, environment capacity, disaster risk, economic development level, population concentration and transport superiority) and one qualitative indicator of strategic choice is developed. Based on the single index evaluation, comprehensive evaluation using regional function suitability evaluation index is conducted, aiming at testing several key parameters including lower limit of protection zones and upper limit of development zones at the provincial level. In addition, a planning-oriented zoning method of major function zones is also discussed, which has brought the first MFOZ planning in China. According to the MFOZ caliber, it is forecasted that national spatial development intensity will rise from 3.48% in 2010 to 3.91% in 2020. Furthermore, according to caliber of the provincial integrated MFOZ planning, the area of optimized, prioritized and restricted zones accounts for 1.48%, 13.60% and 84.92%, respectively, and that of urbanized, foodstuff-security and ecological safety zones accounts for 15.08%, 26.11% and 58.81%, respectively. In combination of analyses of development level, resources and environmental carrying status and quality of the people's livelihood, the main characteristics of MFOZ were identified. Through verification, MFOZ draft of national and provincial scales, which is interactively accomplished with "MFOZ Technical Process" put forward by the author, is mostly above 80% identical with what have been forecasted.
Economic technological development area (ETDA) is not only the critical growth pole of China's economic development, but also an important carrier of industrial development. This paper explored the spatio-temporal pattern of national and provincial economic and technological development areas, and the characteristics of industrial agglomeration in the eastern coastal region of China during 1996-2013, using the multi-distance spatial cluster analysis and kernel density estimation method in ArcGIS. The results showed that: (1) The distribution of economic technological development areas presents a concentrating trend, with the spatial pattern changing from the poly-centric agglomeration to the single-center agglomeration. (2) The scale and intensity of spatial concentration decreased first and then increased rapidly, which indicated that the intensity of spatial concentration was further strengthened, as the scale of spatial agglomeration expanded. (3) The agglomeration scale and degree in each agglomeration region have large differences, and the areas with the larger scale of spatial concentration prefer to smaller intensity of spatial concentration. (4) Economic technological development areas in the eastern coastal region have larger advantage in equipment manufacturing industry, textile and garment industry, the electronic communications industry, food industry, and petrochemical industry, but the spatial patterns of these industries are quite different.
Transportation is one of the most important factors affecting spatial structure of tourist flow. Taking Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Rail (Hereinafter referred to as the HSR) as an example, the paper firstly explores the features and HSR effects of spatial structure of regional tourist flow with the help of social network analysis method. And then it points out the changes of the accessibility in regional transportation. After analyzing the following various influencing factors, e.g. the initial endowment of regional tourist resources, the hospitality facilities, the density of regional tourism transportation network, the location, etc., the paper discusses about the mechanism of HSR effect of spatial structure in regional tourist flow. The results are shown as follows: (1) The HSR effects of spatial structure in regional tourist flow are manifested as the "Matthew effect", the "filtering effect", the "diffusion effect" and the "overlying effect"; (2) The "Matthew effect" of HSR is manifested under the obvious interaction of the location condition, the initial endowment of tourist resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density and the "time-space compression"; the "filtering effect" of HSR is manifested in those tourism nodes without favorable location condition, endowment of tourist resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density, and obvious "time-space compression"; For those tourist nodes that boast favorable advantages in terms of location condition, endowment of tourist resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density and obvious "time-space compression", they will become diffusion sources. HSR will strengthen the aggregation effects of tourist flow in those diffusion sources, and thereafter, will diffuse to the peripheral tourist areas, manifesting the mode of "aggregation-diffusion"; HSR has resulted in the multiplicity phenomenon in terms of tourists' traveling spatial range for those from large-scale spaces. However, the "overlying effect" is only generated in those tourist nodes with favorable location condition, endowment of tourist resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density, and obvious "time-space compression".
Urban vulnerability refers to the coping capacity necessary to resist disturbances from various internal or external natural factors and human factors, such as available resources, ecological environmental systems, economic and social development, during an urban development process. A city that has an anti-disturbance capacity below a certain threshold level is considered vulnerable. The concept of urban vulnerability comprehensively reflects urban resource vulnerability, eco-environmental vulnerability, economic vulnerability, and social vulnerability. Research on the assessment and regulatory control of urban vulnerability is of great significance for both urbanization quality improvement and sustainable development in China. In this study, using systematic analyses combined with a comprehensive index assessment method, we selected 10 subindexes involving 36 specific parameters from four aspects (resources, eco-environmental systems, economics, and social development) to construct a comprehensive index system for the assessment of China's urban vulnerability. In addition, the standard values of measurements were established and used to evaluate overall urban vulnerability and its spatial differentiation among cities at the prefecture level and above in China. This study revealed that China's urban vulnerability demonstrates a "grade-difference" based differentiation and overall vulnerability is moderate. The differences in the extent of China's urban vulnerability were divided into five grades: low vulnerability, relatively low vulnerability, moderate vulnerability, relatively high vulnerability, and high vulnerability. Urban vulnerability has a remarkable spatial differentiation of both "gradient distribution" and "clustered distribution", as demonstrated by the facts that cities in eastern China are significantly less vulnerable than those in the central and western regions and the cities with low vulnerability are distributed in the form of agglomeration, which fits the urban agglomerations in China well. The extent of urban vulnerability corresponds to city size, and the bigger the city, the lower its vulnerability. Resource-based cities are more vulnerable than comprehensive cities, and cities with higher functional comprehensiveness have relatively low vulnerability. In addition, a city's economic growth rate does not reflect the extent of its urban vulnerability; in other words, high-speed economic growth does not necessarily indicate low urban vulnerability. The purpose of this study was to address how to scientifically assess overall urban vulnerability and how to effectively cope with and reduce urban vulnerability. This study provides scientific evidence to enrich our understanding of urban vulnerability and sustainable development and to solve problems such as resource exhaustion, eco-environmental disruption, the transformation of economic growth mechanisms, and a series of other social issues that arise during urbanization and industrialization.
Urban-rural development transformation (URDT) is a comprehensive human process of elements transfer, strategy change and mechanism transformation between urban and rural areas in the new period of China. Under the background of coordinated industrialization, urbanization, informatization and agricultural modernization, the investigation of dynamic disciplines and spatial-temporal structure of URDT is of great importance to promote new-type urbanization and coordinated urban-rural development in China. The paper investigates the centrality, dynamics and differences of URDT in the Bohai Rim region by using the gridding and geostatistics methods, and analyzes the spatial sensibility probability of URDT based on the Logistic regression model. The results show that: (1) The centrality of URDT presents spatial difference structure with the central cities at different levels as the nucleus. In the plain areas, super city is the first-class agglomeration center, prefecture cities are the second-class agglomeration center while counties and towns are the third-class agglomeration center. The central agglomeration is not obvious in the mountainous areas. (2) The spatial expansion of URDT presents the feature of "agglomeration at small areas while dispersion at large areas". With Beijing, Tianjin, Jinan, Shenyang, Dalian, Shijiazhuang and Qingdao as the nucleuses, the urban space expands outwards. Places form as 'C' belt along the coastal lines and the harbors have fast land use conversion. These cities have become hot spots in the region. (3) Influenced by the 'point-axis-area' location elements, the spatial sensibility of URDT is of obvious regional differences and central agglomeration. Its suitable probing scale is 1200 meters. (4) The most sensitive zone of URDT in the future is the belt of Beijing-Tianjin-Binhai region. The new coordinated economic structure in the Bohai Rim region develops with Beijing and Tianjin as the core, and Liaodong Peninsula and Shandong Peninsula as two wings. The Bohai Rim region is the third largest economic zone in China behind the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta. Based on the spatial centrality, dynamics and differences, urban-rural space optimization, different management and control measures should be taken to promote rational urban-rural development and layout in the Bohai Rim region in China.
There is a big gap between general rural modernization paradigm and huge empirical rural geography studies. This gap results in impotent development strategies on regionally differentiated countryside. Based on multifunctional agriculture theory and multifunctional rural theory which emerged in Western World as a new paradigm, this paper discusses the multiple objectives, differentiated pathways and policies of agriculture and rural development in China. Firstly, this paper reflects the problems and challenges caused by modernization paradigm in rural China on economic, social, and environmental aspects, as well as that of western developed countries. It can be concluded that conventional agricultural and rural modernization is developed largely at the expense of rural environment, social fabric and economic viabilities. Obviously, "modernization development paradigm" alone is not enough for healthy agricultural and rural development in such booming economy as China. A better paradigm should be developed which takes economic development, social justice and environmental sustainability into account at the same time. After a brief review of multifunctional agriculture theory and multifunctional rural theory overseas, the multiple objectives of agriculture and rural development in China are put forward. These multiple objectives, however, should not and could not be a burden on rural space indiscriminatingly due to the enormous differentiation of natural and socio-economic conditions. Thus, the final but main part of this paper envisions the differentiated pathways and policy portfolios of agricultural and rural development in China from the perspective of territorial division.
Cities in China face high and rapidly increasing exposure to disaster risk, calling for effective countermeasures. Reducing disaster vulnerability is a direct and effective way to reduce disaster risk, which requires first and foremost the identification and assessment of vulnerabilities of societies, economies, etc. Economic vulnerability assessment is a significant step in risk evaluation, a prerequisite for effective disaster prevention planning and an important base for emergency management and recovery plan. This paper develops a model for the economic vulnerability assessment, which takes into account of scale of enterprises, vulnerability of industrial sectors, importance of industrial sectors and economic density. Based on the economic vulnerability assessment model, this paper develops an urban economic vulnerability evaluation system, and conducts a case study of Haidian District in Beijing using this system. According to the results, we can identify how many and which blocks are at the level of high and very high economic vulnerability, which can provide useful and practical information for pre-disaster prevention planning, emergency response and recovery plan. Therefore, this evaluation system proves to be effective for economic vulnerability assessment. The economic vulnerability assessment model and the establishment of economic vulnerability assessment system in this paper make it possible for the government to quickly evaluate the economic vulnerability and identify the spatial distribution of vulnerable areas, in all, they are useful explorations into the construction of disaster management information system and will have good application prospects in the area of decision support.
From a territorial perspective, urbanization is the process of the (re-) territorialization of urban spaces, in which space resources are constantly allocated among individuals and social groups. The collapse of the Danwei system and subsequent establishment of the community system in 1990 reflect a new form of governmental territorialization in the urban grassroots. Our study, focusing on the Dongtai community in Dongguan city, analyzes the dynamic territorial politics of government, market, and civil society in the urban grassroots of China. The Dongtai community is situated in the southern Dongcheng District of Dongguan and has an area of 3.8 square kilometers with 62,000 permanent residents, 76% of whom have no household registration. The fieldwork was conducted from the end of 2012 to the beginning of 2013. The dominant administrative territorialization under the Danwei system has significantly been replaced by market territorialization, in which the participation of civil forces has also increased. However, the lack of a mechanism for coordinating territorialization and deviated orientation of the government has caused the urban grassroots to engage in vicious territorial politics with the prevailing market forces, weakened administrative forces, and heavily suppressed civil forces. That accounts for the reason why the community system is still far from achieving the ideal status of urban governance. Therefore, institutional reform should construct multi-agent governing territorial units and mechanisms of territorial politics for urban grassroots management. The role of the government should be transformed from regulator to mediator of territorial structure, which in turn will motivate the civil forces to participate in urban governance, create diverse mediums of territorial politics, and prevent administrative and capital powers from over-permeating into the daily spaces. Resident-rights groups (e.g., owner committee) and indirect administrative territorialization (e.g., official means of laws, institutions, and planning) should be explored.
The comparative studies of large-scale land use and land cover change (LUCC) among different countries can deepen our understanding of its historical processes and driving forces, and it is also significant for the regulation of human land-use behavior and adaptation to global climate change. Based on the data covering a long time scale, this paper compared and analyzed the temporal and spatial characteristics of LUCC between China and the United States (US) over the past 300 years. The results are shown as follows. (1) Over the past 300 years, the cropland area shows a growing tendency overall in both China and the US. As a traditional agricultural country, China increased cropland area by 79.46×104 km2 for 1661-1980s, but the per capita cropland decreased from 5.5 mu (Chinese area unit, 1 mu = 666.7 m2) in 1685 to 1.5 mu in 2000; while the cropland area of the US increased by 190.87×104 km2 for 1700-1950 and the per capita cropland area increased from 9.4 mu in 1700 to 30.2 mu in 1890, although the US has a short history and its agriculture started late. (2) Affected by the land reclamation, the forest and grassland areas decreased by about 1.45 million km2 and 1.37 million km2 in the US over the past 300 years; and the corresponding numbers of China are about 0.90 million km2 and 0.40 million km2, respectively. (3) In terms of the variation of spatial pattern, cropland expansion of China mainly occurred in border areas (such as the northeast, southwest, Inner Mongolia) and the mainland hilly areas; while under the influence of the "westward movement", cropland expansion of the US occurred in the Midwest. (4) The main factors affecting land use change of China and the US are policy, population and agricultural technology. Because of the differences in resource endowment and agricultural development history between the two countries, the population and economic interests are the fundamental driving factors to China and the US, respectively. In terms of the orientation of agricultural technology development, China has a large population and less per capita cropland area, and the agricultural technology improved slowly, while the US has a small population and more per capita cropland area, but the agricultural technology improved quickly, especially in the terms of the mechanization.
Urbanization has increased the risk of urban flood. Quantitative research of urban rainfall-runoff process, can provide a scientific basis for the scientific planning and management of the city. In this paper, the land use/cover data and urban functional zones within Beijing five-ring areas were classified with the aid of GIS and RS technology. The SCS-CN method, as a traditional empirical model in the fields such as surface hydrology, was selected for simulating the surface runoff potentials within different urban functional zones in this study. Meanwhile, we analyzed the distribution of the surface runoff under different return periods of precipitation. Then the index of Moran's I was used to recognize the "hot spots" and "cool spots" of surface runoff in Beijing five-ring areas. The result showed that, the distribution configuration of surface runoff experienced a remarkable difference under different return periods of precipitation. The area of high runoff potential regions increased from 18.90% to 54.74% across the whole five-ring areas when seeing 1-year and 100-year return periods of precipitation respectively. Due to the difference and diversity of the impervious surface rate, runoff risks differed significantly from each other across different urban functional zones. For example, the highest risk of runoff generation was captured in the commercial zone by the hydrological model, with an average of 24.76 mm under 1-year return period of precipitation. The preserved zones, on the other hand, had the lowest risks of runoff generation (7.36 mm). Furthermore, the potential risk of runoff depth became similar to the increase in precipitation return-period. Finally, the spatial cluster of various runoff risk zones was captured by using spatial autocorrelation analysis method. In general, runoff risk zones experienced a circular pattern, which decreased from the central to the peripheral region. In most cases, the commercial and residential zones located in the core area of the city were prone to higher runoff generation and risks. Large parks and natural green areas, on the other hand, can help to minimize the flooding risk, and thus can be treated as the low-risk zones. These zones are mainly situated within the fourth to fifth-ring road areas of Beijing city. In order to remit the flooding hazard, city administrators should take account of the distribution of runoff risk area and rainfall-runoff characteristics of various urban functional zones before the relevant regulations were formulated. And also the ecological advantage within the city should be made full use of to solve the urban flooding hazard.
Based on impervious surface extraction technology, segmental and zonal partition method and inequality index, this paper presented the development and utilization information in coastal zones surrounding the South China Sea in 2010, and analyzed the spatial differentiation along the coastal and zonal features from coast to inland areas. Then, it discussed the relationships between coastal zone development and coastal geomorphology, geographical location and natural conditions. Results suggested that: first, the development and utilization in this region differed greatly; development intensity in Singapore and China was much higher, while development intensity in Cambodia and Indonesia was relatively low. Second, coastal land development surrounding the South China Sea presented a spatial aggregation, and formed high-gathering areas centered on the Pearl River Delta of China, Thailand Chao Phraya River Delta, Singapore, the Straits of Malacca, Brunei, and the Manila Bay of Philippines. Third, the development intensity of coastal land showed zonal differences due to the coastal location and coastal geomorphology differences; areas close to the coast showed higher development intensity than areas far away from the coast, and coast in the estuary showed higher development intensity than other coasts.
As a fundamental supplying carrier of natural ecosystem services in urban areas, ecological land couples human social development and natural ecological succession based on the inherent correlation between land use and land cover. Thus spatial optimization of ecological land has gradually become a vital and comprehensive approach to address the conflicts between urban development and ecological conservation. The measurement of urban ecological land demand can directly determine the equilibrium between supply and demand for ecological land, which is a significant step in overall planning and management of urban ecological land. After a systematic review of the concept of ecological land, the similarities and differences between ecological demands and ecological land demands are discussed in this paper. Then a conceptual space-function framework for measuring urban ecological land demand is proposed. Within this framework methodologies of measuring urban ecological land fall into three categories, namely experimental predication, ecosystem services and spatial patterns. In details, the category of experimental predication includes legal quota and historical trend methods. The methods of ecological footprint and carbon-oxygen equilibrium belong to the category of ecosystem services, while the method of ecological security pattern is included in the spatial patterns category. By methodological principles analysis, the advantages and disadvantages of these methods are comparatively discussed and summarized in terms of comprehensiveness, representativeness, threshold and area, and location. Finally, four key directions of future research are presented: urban ecological land classification related to ecological functions, comprehensive efficiency measurement on urban ecological land focusing on spatial patterns of ecological land, functional tradeoff of urban ecological land using multi-target scenarios, and urban ecological hinterland recognition based on ecological land supply-demand balance analysis.
