Social area analysis is a conventional approach of studying social division and social structure in urban area. However, it mainly focused on the interpretation of demographic indicators, but neglected spatial dimension, thus it is generally difficult to discover the diversity of social space in different cities by such way. Taking the methods of social atlas for reference, this paper primarily attempts to present a series of social maps based on the Sixth National Census and POI data from electronic map. And then, from the characteristics of the maps, an improved index system of social space is brought forward, which includes "demographic properties", "social facilities" and "organization" . With a cluster analysis based on this system, 11 types of social areas are identified in Dongguan, namely (1) old city center, (2) high-rise residential and commercial areas, (3) general residential areas, (4) sub-commercial center, (5) administration center, (6) industrial community areas, (7) low density suburban areas, (8) historical culture areas, (9) new residential areas, (10) agricultural areas, and (11) old age community. Furthermore, it can be concluded into 3 kinds of social space: urban community, rural community, and rural migrant workers community, which demonstrated that Dongguan shows a Triad Spatial Structure model. In the end, this research declares that social atlas is an advanced research method for social space analysis in urban area, as it effectively help to understand the complexity of social space, and reconstruct the research framework of social space in China.
Expand intensity index (EII) is an index commonly used to characterize the extent and speed of urban expansion. In other words, it is simply used to describe and analyze the physical spatial change from the perspective of urban area. But this index only represents the result of urban expansion neglecting the feeling of people to space and the underlying mechanisms of urban expansion. Moreover, an in-depth study is ignored on the evolving pattern of urban space and cannot reflect human activities in urban space. This paper presents a new expansion intensity index based on space syntax by considering the driving effect of transport network on urban expansion, namely space syntax expand intensity Index (SS-EII). SS-EII can reflect the syntactic variables about spatial clustering and dispersion and analyze the changes of spatial accessibility. Compared to the conventional expand intensity index, SS-EII not only cares about the result of urban expansion, but also captures the effect of transportation on the pattern and direction of urban expansion as well as the feeling of human to urban space. With Cotton Lake Town in Guangdong Province, China as an example, SS-EII is utilized to compare expansion speeds of built-up areas in different directions. It can be concluded that the result based on SS-EII is consistent to the actual situation of urban expansion and the correlation coefficient with EII is higher than 0.95.
Vulnerability theory is an important tool to analyze the degree, mechanism and process of interaction between human and environment, which provides a new perspective for the research of sustainability assessment. Applying the tool of social vulnerability to studies of urban fringe, we consider that rapid urbanization is the major disturbance to social system of urban fringe. Taking Xi'an as an example and selecting 25 subdistricts in Xi'an urban fringe in 2013 as the basic units, this paper constructs an evaluation framework and index system of social vulnerability in urban fringe from the perspectives of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. By using entropy method, function model and combining with Fragstats software, remote sensing and geographic information system technology, this paper reveals the spatial differentiation pattern and key influencing factors of social vulnerability in Xi'an urban fringe. The results are shown as follows: (1) The exposure pattern of Xi'an urban fringe is gradually slowing down from the center, and the distance from the fringe to the center of the city has a prominent effect on the spatial distribution of exposure. High sensitivity and low exposure, as well as low sensitivity and high exposure have similar characteristics in spatial terms. Affected by non-spatial factors, the spatial regularity of adaptive capacity is not obvious, which is mainly affected by urbanization on the time scale. (2) The degree of social vulnerability and its spatial distribution are imbalanced, and the social vulnerability indexes are dominated by middle and low levels. The units of low social vulnerability indexes are distributed in the inner of urban fringe, while the units of middle social vulnerability indexes are dispersed in the periphery of urban fringe. (3) There are eight factors, including proportion of construction land, having important impacts on the social vulnerability. The change of land use pattern and landscape, as well as the imbalance of material and social development in urban fringe are the main factors. Moreover, the discrepancy of social transformation of different subdistricts in urban fringe exacerbates social vulnerability. (4) To adapt to the disturbance, urban fringe should optimize the internal structure and function of the social system by establishing adaptive management strategies and strengthening the adaptive capacity.
In contemporary China, housing price has become the vital issue, which attracted considerable attention from the governments and inhabitants. However, there are relatively few studies on spatial differentiation of housing prices in China at the county level. In addition, there is no unanimous conclusion on the main factors influencing spatial differentiation of housing price. To meet this deficiency, using spatial autocorrelation and kernel density function, this study examines the spatial differentiation pattern, spatial correlation characteristics and the distribution shape of housing prices in China, and constructs the 'Pyramid of Housing Price Grade' based on the average housing prices of China's counties in 2014. Furthermore, a housing price model is established according to the demand-supply-market theory in order to explore the impact factors, and intensity differences of the influencing factors are also analyzed. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) There exists significant spatial correlation and agglomeration of housing prices in China's counties, and the differentiation patterns are featured by the administrative grade and the spatial agglomeration simultaneously; (2) The housing prices present pyramid-ranked distribution in China. This finding indicates that the higher the housing price, the less the urban population. (3) The proportion of rental households, scale of the floating population, housing affordability, housing market activity and the cost of land are five core influencing factors of housing prices in China's counties. The intensities of these influencing factors vary across administrative grade sub-markets.
Based on charts of four present urban planning land uses in Huainan city and Huaibei city, and with the aid of Arcgis software, the process and features of the urban spatial structural evolution in coal source-based cities are disclosed by performing visualization presentation and quantitative analysis on the process of spatial structural evolution in the two cities. By overlaying analysis on different time points and different types of land use, four spatial reconstruction patterns are summarized based on the replacement scales, frequencies, extents, intensities and spatial adjacent relations between the main types of land uses in the cities, i.e., replacement and reconstruction of commercial—residential lands, replacement and reconstruction of commercial—industrial lands, replacement and reconstruction of residential—industrial lands, and replacement and reconstruction of industrial—residential lands. It is indicated that the present coal source-based cities mainly focus on the replacements and reconstructions of commercial—residential lands and those of residential—industrial lands due to their large replacement areas and high frequencies. In conclusion, the influences on the spatial reconstructions in coal source-based cities have been analyzed in six aspects, i.e. economic development, industrial succession, system reformation, urbanization, environmental protection and urban planning. The internal spatial reconstruction is believed to be a self-repairment process for the coal source-based cities.
Air pollution is a serious problem brought by the rapid urbanization and economic development in China, imposing great challenges and threats to population health and the sustainability of the society. Based on the real-time air quality monitoring data obtained for each Chinese city from 2013 to 2014, the spatio-temporal characteristics of air pollution are analyzed using various exploratory spatial data analysis tools. With spatial econometric models, this paper further quantifies the influences of social and economic factors on air quality at both the national and regional scales. There are several important findings: (1) During 2013 and 2014, the number of days with air quality meeting the national standard are increasing, but the annual air quality is getting worse, which is evidenced by a significant increase of AQI values during the period (higher AQI values representing worse air quality). There also appear to be substantial regional variations in the sense that air quality tends to be better in the south and east of China compared with the northern and western China. In terms of temporal patterns, air quality in Chinese cities shows significant seasonal variations, with better-than-average air quality observed during summer and autumn while worse-than-average air quality in spring and winter. (2) With respect to the driving forces of air quality variations, energy consumption, industrialization, investment in technology, and economic development (per capita GDP) have been found to be statistically significantly associated with air quality at the national scale. For example, 1% increase in per capita GDP is related to a decrease of about 0.24% in AQI values (thus better air quality), everything else equal. (3) There is great heterogeneity in the driving forces of air quality among different regions. For instance, whilst one unit increase in industrialization rates (that is an increase of one percentage) is associated with 10.4% increase in AQI values at the national scale, the same amount of increase in industrialization rates is associated with 125.5% and 37.5% increases in AQI values in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolitan areas and the Yangtze River Delta, respectively. Such spatial heterogeneity has also been observed in the associations between air quality and energy consumption, investment in technology and per capita GDP, implying that geography should be taken into account in the future exploration of the relationships between economic development and air quality or general environmental pollution issues and in the design and implementation of government policies targeting air pollution deductions and sustainable development.
Food security has become a worldwide concern. Considering the huge population of China, the need for food security in the country cannot be overemphasized. Grain is an important source of food for the Chinese people. Therefore, it is necessary to understand grain output and deficit situation in China. In this study, with the help of GIS and Geoda analysis methods, we constructed a relationship model of grain output and deficit to understand the structure and spatial distribution. Based on population and grain statistic data from 2008 to 2012, this study took 333 prefectures and districts as objects. The results show that grain supply and demand are currently in a net surplus situation in China. There are 160 cities that could satisfy their grain needs by cultivation of grain, accounting for 48% of all prefecture units. In reference to grain supply-demand spatial distribution, there exists obvious regional differentiation, presenting grain deficit in western China, likewise for southern regions, and grain surplus in eastern and northern regions. In addition, the regularity of scale distribution is proposed. Grain supply-demand exhibits significant spatial correlation and clustering effects at provincial and prefecture levels. And lastly, the net amount of grain surplus gradually increased from 2008 to 2012. High grain-output and high grain-deficit are the dominant transfer types. The high grain-output regions make great contributions to the growing of grain surplus, accounting for 75.24% of the increment.
Taking eastern Nankai earthquake in Japan as a hazard scenario and Toyota as well as its related suppliers as a case, based on individual data of auto plants and their topological-geographical supply network, we simulated the propagation process of disaster risk in industry network, and established the models for direct physical damage and indirect function losses assessment, which provides an alternative risk assessment method for industrial geographical network. The results show that in the case of eastern Nankai earthquake, 48.1% of Toyota plants would be directly damaged, of which the production facility losses and building losses would be about 5587 billion yen and 1980 million yen, respectively. Due to the damage to some critical plants, it would indirectly lead to functional interruption of the industrial network. In the scenario of 37 days of recovery, the indirect monetary losses were estimated to be approximate 9230 billion yen. The threats and impacts of eastern Nankai earthquake disaster on the Toyota industrial network are significant, and it is necessary to take structural and non-structural measures to reduce the risk.
From a power hierarchy perspective, this study investigates the innovation pattern and the changes of spatial organization forms of chemical industry, automobile industry and photovoltaic industry in Germany based on spatial econometric models. The established theories argue that the technological characteristics of heavy-chemical industry and the feature of innovative cooperation inevitably result in a weak geographical proximity and an enlarging spatial scale. Because technological hierarchy of clustering firms leads to a fundamental change of innovation externalities, geographical proximity is not a necessary condition for innovation and the spatial scale of innovative cooperation enlarges from a cluster to a region. Empirical research on Germany reveals: the spatial arrangement of heavy-chemical industry presents a weakly geographical proximity effect; its spatial configuration is not a traditional cluster but rather an industrial agglomeration zone based on a larger spatial scale; both heavy industry and chemical industry require a location with comprehensive knowledge and general technology diffusion; the core enterprises tend to be far away from others to be a "island" mostly because they have more power over their innovative partners. Our study suggests that there are three ways to promote the innovation and upgrading as well as optimize the spatial arrangement of China's heavy-chemical industry, namely, enhancing the innovation capability in vertical technology diffusion, establishing the general technology alliances in multiple production process, and fostering the innovation collaboration between large industrial zones.
This study breaks through the traditional thinking of tourism destination residents' perception-attitude-behavior, and directly builds the conceptual model and structural model of mechanism factors of residents' satisfaction of ethnic tourism villages using the semantic network and the structural equation from the core elements of residents' satisfaction of relationship, employment, rewards, expectation and perceived impartiality. Taking the Langde ethnic village, Xijiang ethnic village and Tianlong ethnic village as examples, this study tests the difference validity and the samples reliability and the practicability of structural model. The results show that: (1) the 'community cognition-development aspiration-community participation-empowerment perception-satisfaction attitude-support behavior' is a logical path of residents' satisfaction of ethnic tourism villages, and its functionary mechanism concludes cognition mechanism, benefit mechanism, behavior mechanism and medium perception. (2) The place attachment, ethnic identity, development participation, and community participants of community-driven, government-driven and enterprise-driven ethnic villages have a direct or indirect effect on respective residents' satisfaction. The community empowerment perception of residents in the community-driven ethnic villages has mediated partially effect on the above mechanism factors, but the community disempowerment perception has no intermediary effect. The residents in government-driven and enterprise-driven ethnic villages have been affected jointly by community empowerment perception and community disempowerment perception, and the community disempowerment perception of government-driven ethnic villages' residents is more than the community empowerment perception, and the enterprise-driven ethnic village is opposite. (3) The mechanism of residents' satisfaction of community-driven, government-driven and enterprise-driven ethnic tourism villages has shown significant differences according to the logic path of conceptual model and the effect differences of dimensional variables of mechanism factors of structural model.
Luxury hotels in Dongguan have received much attention in social and cultural geography. Building upon in-depth interview and discourse analysis, this paper employs a regulation-space perspective to explore the institutional initiative that underpins the spatial and temporal evolution of Dongguan's luxury hotels. The goal is to analyze how visible institutional frameworks and invisible rules work together to become an inner logic to shape the development of luxury hotels. This analysis is made in the national-local power nexus. The major research findings are threefolded. First, at the local scale, Dongguan's luxury hotels have undergone three stages of development: incubation (1978-1993), speculation (1994-1999), and taking-off and integration (2000-2004). Second, at the regional scale, the development of luxury hotels in Dongguan is stabilized during 2005 and 2012. More and more external investors have entered Dongguan and changed the power structure that regulates the luxury hotel sectors. Finally, at the national scale, luxury hotels face a top-down restructuring and have to adjust to a new market. Increasingly normalized formal regulations force luxury hotels in Dongguan into a rational stage of development. This paper furthers an understanding of the relation between regulation and space and emphasizes that spatial development of economic sectors are subjected to formal regulations. Spatial evolvement is an institutionalized process in which state regulations have to undertake constant adjustments in order to establish an institutional system conforming to the production of new space.
On January 22nd and 23rd, 2016, "High level Forum of the Development of Chinese Human and Economic Geography under the background of change" was held in Beijing. More than 30 professors attended this forum. On the conference, they discussed on the major progress of the development of China's Human and Economic Geography, and the existing problems, restraint factors, opportunities, international path, developing direction, prospects in the development of the discipline. In recent years, Human and Economic Geography has boomed, facing many important opportunities for development. To establish an academic community for joint researches on major issues and collaborative innovation is a significant route. We should embrace domestic and international characteristics, to promote China's Human and Economic Geography to go to the world arena. In the meantime, the construction of various series of talents and the growth of young and middle-aged talents are also of great significance.
