As an important tool for microscopic studies in human geography, questionnaire survey method has been widely used in developing people-oriented urban concepts. In order to support a scientific and standardized application of questionnaire survey method in human geography studies in China, this paper explored previous studies on the application of questionnaire survey method in human geography in China using the literature metrological method. Taking the survey of Beijing Livable City in 2013 as a case study, we illustrated the design framework and sampling strategy in the questionnaire survey procedure, and summarized some key application areas of questionnaire survey method subsequently. The results showed that: On the positive side, with the extension of human geography, questionnaire survey method tended to be a key approach to collecting data in a wide range of related research topics. However, most studies chose mathematical and statistical models or GIS spatial analysis as the principal method, while the scientific use of questionnaire survey method are often neglected, especially in the sampling design. We suggested that human geographers should pay more attention than before to the whole process of sampling scheme design, which is composed of questionnaire collection method, sampling method, sampling frame selection and the determination of sample size in order to obtain data efficiently. Lastly, questionnaire survey method was widely used in research areas including time and space behavior, living environment, urban society, tourist behavior and rural household behavior. Finally, based on the research framework of questionnaire survey method, we put forward five schemes to improve the application of questionnaire survey method in human geography studies.
The latitude/longitude coordinates of eleven dotted-line segments in The Location Map of the South China Sea Islands (Nanhai zhudao weizhi tu, in Chinese) of the scale 1:4,000,000, produced by the then-Chinese government in 1947, were determined by affine transformation in the geographic information system. Based on this map, a three-dimensional terrain model of the South China Sea was built and then the seafloor topographic characteristics were analyzed with the spatial overlay algorithm. Results show that the lengths and intervals of the dotted-line segments vary with their geographic locations, with larger lengths in the east and smaller lengths in the west. The range and shape of the dotted-line segments, mostly located on the continental slope and shelf, are parallel to the underlying topography. Three principles for demarcation of the dotted line are further summarized: (1) the principle of "equidistance midline" is adopted for the shallow sea basins and canyons; (2) in areas with dramatic reliefs, it follows the axis of troughs; (3) on the southwestern continental slope and shelf of the South China Sea, the shoreline and underlying topography control its distribution. These results could provide the Chinese government a scientific basis for the solution of disputes in the South China Sea.
The boundary of urban built-up areas provides foundational information for urban studies and meets the requirements for urban pattern and urban spatial structure research. However, commonly used methods for identifying the boundary of urban built-up areas such as using remote sensing data of night-light and land use, cadastral data, and building coverage data, are limited in accuracy. To remedy this, this paper proposes to use POI (Point of Interest) data obtained from web maps, assuming that it well reflects the agglomeration of urban activities at higher precision. Based on the underlying connection between POI and the spatial distribution of urban activities, a new method called 'Densi-Graph' is proposed to identify the actual boundary of urban built-up areas with the contour map of the kernel density of POI , where the threshold value for the contour lines to make significant change from densely to loosely placed is picked, giving the boundary of urban and rural areas. Different contour structures for mono-centric, poly-centric and linear cities are discussed, whereby the Densi-Graph method using POI data is validated. The method is also used to study the boundaries of urban built-up areas in China's prefecture level cities. The relationships between the Density-Graph thresholds and the population and location of different cities are discussed. This study advances previous studies in presenting more reliable and objective data on the boundary of urban built-up areas.
This paper tried to understand the global geopolitical economic base from the view of Krugman geographical natures. By collecting the added value in the financial and manufacture sectors of the world's major 21 countries or regions from 2000 to 2012, the authors applied a location quotient model to analyze quantitatively the and concentration status of the world's major countries in both sectors, compared with the situation of resources output in countries and regions. The paper obtained a clustering catalogue list, i.e. "Three Worlds" in globalization era: financial-leading countries (areas) such as USA, UK, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong (China), manufacturing-leading countries (areas) such as Thailand, China, South Korea, Germany, Japan, Vietnam and Taiwan (China), and resource development leading countries (areas) such as Canada, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Mexico. Some countries like India and France, surfaced in equivalent development and might be defined as transitional countries. This classification of economic division may be a guidance for the standing points in each country in geopolitical and geopolinomical sense.
The interdependence of economics among countries has been distinctly enhanced due to the end of the Cold War and the intensification of globalization. In terms of its content and form, geo-politics has shifted from a "high political area", which focuses on safety, to a "low political area", which emphasizes economics, making geo-economics the focus of the researches. Using tools including Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA), Fragmentation Index and Revealed Comparative Advantage Index, this paper revealed China's evolutionary characteristics of geo-economic connections at the global scale, and explored its internal mechanism by grey relational analysis. The results show: (1) China's geo-economic connections have undergone 4 periods of "Inoculating - Sprouting - Rising - Flourishing", which were significantly correlated to economic development and the industrial restructuring. (2) Labor-intensive industry is currently dominant in China, but capital-intensive and technology-intensive industries are gradually developing, and the disadvantages of primary goods is prominent. (3) China's economic power is heterogeneous across space. The geo-economic connections could be identified as global powers' agglomeration and geographical proximity, but it became homogeneous through time and the diameter of economic power has continuously expanded. China has not only maintained stable geo-economic connections with developed countries like the United States of America, Japan and some European countries, but also strengthened connections with developing countries in Africa and South America. (4) Capital, technology and labor endowments are the main internal driving forces behind the spatial-temporal evolution of China's geo-economic connections, among which capital endowment is the key driving force, technology endowment is the important impetus and labor endowment is the fundamental advantage.
Regional economic development is closely related to its productive structure, which evolves constantly. Economic geographers argue that the evolution of regional productive structure is path-dependent and stress the importance of technological relatedness. However, recent studies also suggest that regional and industrial policies may help create a new path of regional development. This study follows the method proposed by Hidalgo to measure technological relatedness and generate product space of Chinese exports using the trade data of China's 31 provinces during 2001-2013. The results show that China has experienced substantial structural transformation in export products, but there are significant regional differences. The coastal region has shifted from the labor intensive to capital and technology intensive products, the central and northeastern regions have first evolved from the resource intensive to labor intensive products, and then to capital and technology intensive products. The western region has transferred from the resource intensive to labor intensive structures. Econometric analysis reports that the evolution of export products of the four regions was significantly driven by technological relatedness during 2001-2007. Technological relatedness still played its role during 2008-2013 for the eastern, central and northeastern regions. But in the western region, regional and industrial policies support the structural transformation of export products. The significance of technological relatedness implies that the evolution of regional export products in China is path dependent. The role of regional policies suggest that institutions may create a new development path.
Optimizing industrial structure is an important research object of human-economic geography, and it is also the object of government departments to strengthen macro-control. This has become even greater problem that China has entered the "new normal" in recent years. The study uses a multi-regional input-output model, with linear programming to build an optimal model of industrial structure as well as a model of optimization degree under the energy constraint. The results show that: (1) Under the constraint of energy conservation, the optimization degree of industrial structure of Anhui province is the highest (0.763), while that of Shanxi is the lowest (0.662). Under the constraint of employment, the optimization degree of industrial structure of Jiangxi is the highest (0.768), while that of Shanxi is the lowest (0.659). (2) Under the constraint of energy conservation, the optimization degree of industrial structure is negatively related to the energy consumption per unit of output value and the proportion of heavy industry. Under the constraint of employment, the optimization degree of industrial structure is negatively related to the proportions of state-owned economy and large enterprises. (3) Considering different orientations of energy conservation and employment, the directions of industrial structure optimization of the six provinces in central China are obviously different. (4) As a whole, central China should maintain or moderately increase the proportion of resource-based industry, greatly raise the proportion of manufacturing including transport equipment and communication equipment, computers and other electronic equipment, moderately reduce the proportion of smelting and pressing of metals and manufacture of non-metallic mineral products. In terms of services, central China should greatly increase the proportions of the production and supply of gas and water industry and tourism, moderately or greatly reduce the proportions of wholesale and retail trade and catering, and maintain or moderately reduce the proportions of transportation and warehousing.
Taking Huainan as an example, the paper, based on the statistical data about national economic development and the urban land-use chart, and with the aid of Arcgis software and SPSS software, builds the coupling evaluation models of the industrial structures and urban spacial forms of the coal resource-based cities from two aspects (coupling coordination degree and spatial responding index), and measures the coupling's process and features of the coal resource-based cities' industrial structure evolution and urban development. The results are as follows: (1) There exists a close interaction between industrial structure and urban spatial form in the developing process of the coal resource-based cities; (2) Industrial structure with essential productive factors play a motivational role in the evolution of urban spatial form. A highly mutual related coupling coordination degree can be found between industrial structure and evolution of urban spatial form. The coupling degrees are between 0.5 and 0.65, showing an increasing tendency, while the coordination degree maintains over 0.99, under a decent coordinating status of moderate coupling. (3) The urban spatial responding degree to industrial structure experiences three stages in the process - rising, descending and ascending - with the high value in the early and final stages and the low value in the middle stage, presenting a "U"-shaped curve. In addition, the study sheds light on the industrial structural evolution of coal-based cities as well as the urban spatial developing coupling mechanism from the perspectives of different life circle stages, distinct spatial and environmental effects of industrial structural productive factors. In our study, it is shown that the spatial development of coal resource-based cities is the result of the rehabilitation of essential productive factors through the spatial effects in the process of industrial structural development.
Research into urban socio-spatial structure was first introduced to Chinese geographers in 1986. Since the beginning of the free-market economic reform in 1987, Chinese cities have changed rapidly and have attracted substantial attention from academia. Chinese case studies have predominantly concerned megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. As the pioneer of China's reform and opening-up, Guangzhou is representative of large Chinese cities in the transformation of the socio-spatial structure. The first research was initiated in the social areas of Guangzhou in 1985. Zhou used data from the fifth population census of 2000 to analyze the social areas of Guangzhou and identified three evolution modes of the socio-spatial structure: the first is based on the development of the old city, the second fouses on the development of the educational or industrial "enclave", and the third presents the development of agricultural areas. The research on the evolution of urban socio-spatial structure, as a vital part of urban geography study, needs a long-term follow-up survey and analysis. Thus, using the Factor Ecological Analysis (FEA), this paper analyzes the social area in Guangzhou with the Sixth National Population Census data of 2010, and further divides the social area into 7 sub-types based on the 7 main factors. Comparing the studies of the 2000s and 1985, we found that: (1) Most of the principal factors are available for the years of 1985-2010, and they have played an increasingly important role during the period studied. In addition, some individual principal factors only appear in a certain year, thus have strong distinct characteristics. (2) The evolution of social areas in Guangzhou has been mainly characterized by type conversion and followed by regional spatial differentiation in 1985-2000; and vice versa in 2000-2010. (3) This study further found evidence of the three evolution modes proposed in 2000 based on the development of the old town, development of enclave of industry and education, and development of the rural community; then it put forward a new model based on the development of the social areas in suburban towns; (4) The market mechanism, administrative mechanism and the family life cycle mechanism work together to the evolution of socio-spatial structure.
The development of the new-type urbanization in the future has aroused great attention from the government and the public. Initially, this research predicts the urbanization and population dynamics on both national and provincial levels from 2015 to 2030. On this basis, this study examines the spatial variation of urbanization given the national urbanization rate of 70.12%. Furthermore, it estimates the national and provincial demands of investment in the new urbanization. The main conclusions can be drawn as follows: (1) The population and urbanization rate will reach 1.445 billion and 70.12% respectively from 2015 to 2030. (2) The demographic dividend will be vanished when population pressure reaches its maximum. The re-production population will reach 70.16 million and a suburban population of 316.7 million will be urbanized, leaving an urban population of 386 million. (3) Although the urbanization rate of each province will increase during 2015-2030, the difference of urbanization rate and urbanization quality between provinces is substantial. In some provinces, urbanization quality and eco-social development are uncoordinated. (4) A total of 4,105,380 billion yuan is needed for the sake of new urbanization and the investment demand in each province varies largely: Guangdong province needs the most funding, which is 148.09 times as much as that of Tibet, which needs the least funding. In the final part, policy suggestions regarding the investment of the new urbanization are put forward.
With the rapid development of rural tourism, local communities have become the places where multi-groups compete and conflict with each other. The differences in preference to tourism development among multi-groups have become a key indicator of conflicts in these communities. Taking Tangyu town as a case, this study employed participatory mapping, which is an important tool of the public participation geographic information system (PPGIS), and semi-structure interview to investigate the landscape values and preferences for tourism development from local residents, tourists and vacation homeowners. Finally we obtained 315 sets of questionnaires, interviews and mappings, which totally generated 5518 geo-spatial points. Based on Brown's land use conflict model, this study combined preference differences and landscape values with geo-spatial analysis to explore the spatial features of differences of different preferences and potential conflicts held by multi-groups. Results indicated that: (1) Preferences toward tourism development and their difference were characterized by obvious location differentiation, and were related to different groups' spatial perception of landscape values. The spatial distribution of conflicts potential associated with tourism development in Tangyu was uneven, but presented a patch structure. The areas with high values of conflict potential were mainly distributed across core areas of tourism development, and the values decreased gradually from the core areas to the peripheral areas. (2) The formation of potential conflict sites was not only impacted by the traditional factors, but also by the spatial factors. The tourism development stages of local community, the involvement degree of those related groups, the spatial structure of tourism development elements and the spatial perception of landscape values, jointly contributed to the formation of conflict sites. (3) The combination of participatory mapping and in-depth interview provided a new method to better understand the spatial features of preferences and conflicts potential associated with tourism development.
According to the complex adaptive system theory, the tourism destination can be regarded as a complex adaptive system which is composed of multiple adaptive agent interactions based on the complex adaptive system theory, and it consists of agent system, tourist attraction subsystem, tourist service facility subsystem and external environment system. This article, taking southern Anhui as a test case, discusses the spatial evolution. Some conclusions can be drawn as follows. (1) The period 1979-1990 was a formation stage of spatial aggregation, during which the tourist attraction was gradually exploited and aggregated. Additionally, the scenic area of Mounts Huangshan and Jiuhuashan became the core attraction, and the agglomeration around the area began to appear. (2) The period 1991-2000 was a growth stage of spatial aggregation, during which the scenic area of Mounts Huangshan and Jiuhuashan expanded and the tourism facility improved, so the spatial aggregation began to grow. At the same time, the scenic area of Xidi and Hongcun developed quickly, thus a new spatial aggregation emerged. (3) Since 2001, we have entered a blowout-development stage of spatial agglomeration. As the adaptive agent of system, government, enterprise, resident, non-governmental organizations and tourists, they achieved nonlinear interactions with the environment system and each other, which formed new tourist elements of the diversification of tourist demand, diverse tourist attraction and rapid development of expressway and others. The combination of new elements and traditional elements gave birth to diverse tourist product, such as cultural tourism, holiday tourism, rural tourism. It improves spatial evolution of the area of southern Anhui. In the future, the diversification of tourism demand will promote the diversification and global use of tourism resource. The main development will be focused on leisure vacation travel with culture, ecology, rural characteristics. Meanwhile, the construction of high-speed transport network, including railway and highway, will strengthen the communication between southern Anhui and the Yangtze River Delta. As a result, the area of southern Anhui will be taken into the tourism development of the Yangtze River Delta region, and also become an important part of the Yangtze River Delta by global tourism.
Based on island tourism planning, this paper analyses the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics and driving mechanism of island tourism effects of Changshan islands through investigation by means of the importance degree of tourism evolution concept model, tourism authenticity indices and changes in tourism function from the point of urban tourism. The results show that: (1) The islands have experienced the landscape tourism stage of tourism destination in the process of tourism evolution (2002-2009) and the background tourism stage of tourism destination (2009-2012). (2) The islands take on the coexistence of time expansion and space expansion from the time and space expansion scales of tourism destination. In terms of the expansion intensity of tourism destination, the expansion is converted from horizontal direction to vertical direction, and the intensive degree of land use sharply rises. As to the function, the island land use has changed from single function to comprehensive and diversified function. (3) Mechanism analysis shows that it has become a main trend that the island tourism takes tourist resources as original driving forces, tourist transportation as well as social and economic factors as endogenous driving forces, and tourist enterprises along with tourist source market as an external driver under the guidance of government policy.
