Agriculture consolidates the process of natural reproduction and economic reproduction. Spatial pattern of agricultural region is comprehensively influenced by factors such as natural geography, economic and social development and advances in technology. Along with the changes of these influencing factors over a long period, agricultural pattern and agricultural function present regional differentiation and spatio-temporal evolution. This lays a scientific foundation for comprehensive agricultural regionalization. China is currently experiencing a new period of coordinated development of industrialization, urbanization, informatization and agricultural modernization. This paper firstly investigates spatio-temporal changes and dynamic characteristics of modern agriculture development conditions in China. Then, it puts forward the coupling measure index system of agricultural natural factors and regional function, zoning principles and scientific method of modern agricultural regionalization under the new development background. Using cluster analysis and qualitative analysis, it carries out a comprehensive research and puts forward China's modern agriculture regionalization scheme in the new era, which divides China into 15 agricultural first-grade regions and 53 agricultural sub-regions. After doing a comparative analysis with the new scheme and the previous one, which was published in 1981, the paper makes a systematic interpretation on current producing situation, regional function, spatial pattern changes and agricultural development trend of each agricultural region and the whole country at last. The results of this research provide scientific basis for strategic structural adjustment and development of modern agriculture in each region. At the theoretical level, this paper provides a research reference for the development of modern agriculture and rural geography. At the application level, it promotes integrated geography research to serve the rural revitalization and national development strategic needs in the transition period in China. The regional agriculture is a natural, economic and technological complex system, with the characteristics of complexity, dynamics and high risk. As such, based on the congnition of spatial differentiation of modern agriculture development patterns, it is necessary to deeply analyze the regional differentiation of agricultural endogenous power, agriculture and rural territorial types, to improve observational research of agricultural geographical engineering and technology, and the economic, ecological, climatic integrated effects of regional agriculture transformation, to summarize systematically regional agricultural models and regional transformation patterns, to explore the early warning mechanism of modern agricultural complex system, and to study continuously the theories and strategic decision-making for promoting agricultural modernization and rural revitalization.
Since the reform and opening up, Chinese cities have experienced a period of rapid transformation and reconstruction against the background of economic globalization. Industrial development is one of the main driving forces of urban spatial expansion; therefore, urban spatial reconstruction in China is first reflected in the reconstruction of industrial space during the transition period. Alongside rapid urbanization, urban industrial construction has gradually shifted from the secondary industry to the tertiary industry, which has an increasing impact on residents' production and living. Thus, paying attention to the spatial distribution of the service industry and its location selection factors has become an important way to explore urban spatial reconstruction. The wholesale industry is an important part of a city's service industry, which has an important influence on commercial production, circulation and consumption. Because wholesale enterprises involve a great number of employees, and its spatial distribution pattern caused traffic congestion, environmental pollution and a series of urban problems, the location of wholesale enterprises has become a hot topic amongst scholars. This paper uses Beijing as a typical example, takes wholesale enterprises as the research object, and analyzes the spatial pattern evolution and agglomeration characteristics of wholesale enterprises in Beijing using kernel density estimation and Ripley's K(d) function. It then explores the influencing factors of the wholesale enterprise location selection by means of Conditional Logit model. The results show that: (1) In the perspective of spatial distribution, wholesale enterprises are mainly concentrated within the Fifth Ring Road, and present obvious spatial agglomeration characteristics; the scale of agglomeration is mainly concentrated in a range of 0-28 km. (2) Seen from the spatial agglomeration strength, the agglomeration peak distance is constantly expanding, the concentration decreased within the Second Ring Road, and three core groupings are formed in a peripheral area. (3) Local economy, city economy, land price, labor cost, infrastructure and spatial distance have a significant influence on the location choice of wholesale enterprises, and land price and agglomeration is the most prominent of all. (4) According to different types of enterprises, foreign enterprises have a great demand for better traffic conditions and innovation environment, but the impact of commercial benchmark land price on the location choice is not significant.
Owing to the multidimensional and spatial nature of poverty and the synthetic and visible analysis merits of geography science, there is a great potential for geography science, which is taking human-environment relationships as core topics, to understand regional poverty and guide the poverty alleviation practices. This article tries to explain the connotation, inscapes, patterns, formation process and countermeasures in a view of geography science based on the retrospect of geographical research on domestic and abroad poverty. The main conclusions showed that: (1) Regional poverty can be considered as a status or process of deprivation on the three dimensions of "human", "activities" and "environment", or the disharmony among them under the specific situation; (2) The inscapes of regional poverty contain subjective factor ("human"), intermediated factor ("activities") and objective factor ("environment"), and the poverty patterns were caused by the deprivation of the three factors or their imbalanced coupling; (3) The formation process of regional poverty patterns can be understood as a nonlinear negative accumulative cycle of disorderly coupling of subjective factor, intermediated factor and objective factor. At the same time, it can be considered as a phenomenon that the subjective factor ("human") and objective factor ("environment") can not catch up or match the changes of intermediated factor ("activities") during the transitions of human civilization; (4) Synthetical poverty alleviation needs targeted interventions as well as coordination of all countermeasures, which is similar to the consultation of doctors in hospital, which may be a good way to achieve the goal.
High-speed traffic networks, as one of the most important methods of regional linkage, play a critical role in promoting the construction of social and economic spatial structure. Expressway network toll collection provides effective data support for regional traffic flow research, from the perspective of expressway network. The paper, supported by O-D data from toll stations throughout the Jiangsu expressway network during 2014, takes Jiangsu province as an example to conduct research on the characteristics and influencing factors of regional traffic flow. The following results can be obtained: (1) The traffic flow in Jiangsu is quite unbalanced, and the core codes (toll stations and counties) are mainly located in southern Jiangsu, which show a radioactive structure with core codes as the center. (2) The characteristics of distance decay are generally shown in the vehicle flow. The longer the space distance is, the more obvious the decay regularity of distance becomes. The relationship between the vehicle flow and distance is in accord with power law distribution. (3) Permanent residents, economic distribution and expressway mileage can effectively explain regional traffic flow distribution. Specifically, economic development has the greatest influence on the traffic flow in northern Jiangsu; population has local advantages on traffic flow in southern Jiangsu; expressway mileage has a relatively weak negative influence on the traffic flow in southern Jiangsu.
The concept of imaginative geographies demonstrates a strong analytical power for geopolitics and postcolonial geographical issues in daily life. The present study adopts the theoretical view of "Traveling Theory" proposed by Edward Said to develop a comprehensive analysis covering the origin and evolution of imaginative geographies research in human geography. This study holds that the real start of the attention of human geography academia on the concept of imaginative geographies was found in the early 1990s. Under the contextual pressure of Marxist geography, the concept of imaginative geographies was adopted in geography and gradually developed into a core concept in studies of the North-South relations as well as ethnic and racial issues. The topics involved in the previous research include global issues and international relations, nation-states and nationalism, the social and cultural issues, and the daily lives. These studies reveal the basic logic of imaginative geographies: By dividing space into "our places" and "other places", "we" imagine and construct the differentiation of "we" and "others", and because of the desires, fantasies and fears to the others, "we" construct the imaginative geographies about the others; these imaginative geographies would be used and reconstructed in international relationship, the construction of nation-states and people's everyday lives. In these studies, the theory fully displays its explanatory and critical nature. Meanwhile it exposes the problem of institutionalization: imaginative geographies, as a critique of "discourse hegemony", has become discourse hegemony per se, which results in a possible loss of its due critical consciousness. Based on the analyses above, the present study further points out that as critical theories and empirical theories differ greatly in logics, due caution should be paid to the contexts in which a critical theory is introduced, and that critical investigations into the historical and contextual backgrounds should always be the fundamental principles in maintaining the critical consciousness. In addition, it reaches a profound conclusion: human geography in China should reflect the post-colonial academic problems it faces, examine the history and context of academic research, and maintain the due critical consciousness between westernization and indigenization.
Tourism, an emerging and important driver of development, is irreversibly changing the evolution process of residential spaces. The spatial characteristics and social effects of residential spaces in tourist destinations are one of the most important dimensions for measuring social transformation of an area, and hence are important subjects for the study of tourism geography. This paper, taking the case of Qiandaohu Town, explores the residential space development of this tourist destination with a variety of research methods including field observations, interviews, questionnaires, statistical analysis and GIS technology. It identifies and classifies community types, measures spatial differentiation in living spaces and reveals typical residential space distribution patterns influenced by tourism. It also constructs a residential space social effect index system in terms of the satisfaction with the living space, social interaction and social integration. The research shows that: (1) Amid social and economic transformation, and with the development of the tourism industry and continuous urban renewal, the development of residential spaces has undergone five stages. (2) A total of 76 basic spatial units or communities have been identified, which are classified into rural communities, mixed residential and business communities, old commercially developed communities, commonplace commercially developed communities, high-end commercially developed communities, high-end villas and tourism resorts. (3) The phenomenon of urban residential space differentiation exists in residential areas in tourist destinations. The lower the social status of a residential community is, the greater the residential differentiation turns; the higher the social status, the smaller it becomes. The residential spaces in Qiandaohu Town are distributed in layered spheres. From the lakeside to the city center, the residential grade gradually goes down, with rural communities embedded into the main residential areas like a ladder, and the old residential areas and tourism resorts located in the periphery of Qiandaohu Town. (4) The development of tourism has led to the social differentiation of living spaces, and led to a fracturing of the traditional social relations in tourism destinations, which further affects the satisfaction of the community, social interaction and social integration. Overall, residents in the study area are satisfied with their living spaces, and satisfaction has obvious spatial differences. Residents in different communities differ in their willingness to make friends. Most residents can adapt to the local way of life pretty well.
Standard Deviation (Rsd), Gini coefficient (G), Theil index (T), seasonality ratio (Rsr), and ratio of highest to lowest-season demand (Rhl) are popular measures of tourism seasonality; however the relationship between these measures and their influence on changes in tourism flow varies in literatures. Two sensitivity indices were developed to reflect the effect of the changes of tourism flow on the tourism seasonality measures (si) and the relative effect of the changes of tourism flow on the tourism seasonality measures (pi). The correlation coefficient of measures of tourism seasonality in various scales (Int), the
A huge number of traditional settlements in China represent their outstanding values in such fields as economy, society, and culture. It is notable that researches on traditional settlements will help to promote the sustainable developments of economy and society currently. Lately, a new tide of research on the traditional settlements, stimulated by the new urbanizing strategy, is arising across the entire country. This paper mainly focuses on the methods in deriving the spatial forms and structural patterns in the traditional settlement landscape genome maps (TSLGM) by case studies of Hunan Province (located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Dongting Lake in China). Firstly, this work defines these five types as centralized-circular rings, pie-extensions, multiple-direction extensions, belt, discrete distribution, and blocks, respectively. The five basic spatial form types are spatially driven by their pertinent landscape genes' spatial sequences of the genome by map analysis. Mathematic features of the form types are derived by their structural details and related properties. Secondly, the mathematic features are further used to help draw the spatial structures of the Hunan Province's traditional settlements incorporated with the related landscape genomes by the supporting-field from the Spatial Syntax Theory. Deep comparisons of different spatial structured cases prove that the mainstream spatial structures of Hunan Province's traditional settlements are symmetry, boundary, street-alley-port, parallel, geomancy image, respectively. It is shown that the spatial morphology properties of the traditional settlements derived by TSLGM are helpful in improving the traditional settlement landscape gene theory, refining the understanding values of traditional settlements and forwarding the preservation progresses on the traditional settlements. More importantly, this work confirms that TSLGM is a very promising method in mining the geographical features from the traditional settlements and establishing the regionalization framework across the whole country.
With the process of urbanization and motorization, obesity and chronic diseases have become a serious social problem, but the empirical study on the impact of urban built environment on public physical health is still lacking in Chinese context. In this paper, we use the data from China's general social survey in 2010 and select 6740 samples in 278 urban communities throughout 31 provincial areas. Other geographical data are also introduced into the analysis, such as point of interests and road network surrounding each community. In order to control the interference of self-selection mechanism, this research uses a quasi-experimental method called propensity score matching. According to this empirical analysis, firstly, the study indicates that high-density land use has a negative impact on the overall physical health of the residents, which is contrary to comparatively low density developed cities in Western countries. Nevertheless, similar to international literatures, all of the mixed urban function, urban texture with an accessible branch network, and adequate health facilities play a positive role in reducing BMI, inhibiting overweight and lowering chronic diseases. Secondly, these built environment elements have various impacts on different social classes. The upper class is mainly influenced in the subjective physical health perception while the lower class is more affected in the objective physical health status. Thirdly, there is a closer relationship between the ambient built environment characteristics of small spatial scale and the health status of middle- and low-stratum groups, but this rule is not obvious among middle and high social classes, which reflects that the surrounding environmental quality of public space has a more direct and important impact on the physical health of vulnerable groups. In conclusion, this study proves the effectiveness of active spatial intervention in the process of improving public physical health as well as alleviating health inequality problem, and then puts forward some suggestions on optimization strategy of urban built environment in China.
Numerous studies have examined the influencing factors of CO2 emissions from transportation at the national, city and community levels. However, fewer studies have considered the effect of residential self-selection. Ignoring this effect is likely to result in underestimating the role of the built environment, thus affecting relevant planning and policy development. Is the effect of residential self-selection in Chinese cities the same as in Western cities? How and to what extent does the built environment affect CO2 emissions from travel after controlling for the effect of residential self-selection? To address these questions, this paper first measures the CO2 emissions from travel on the basis of the Travel Intelligent Query System (TIQS) developed by us on the Baidu map LBS (Location Based Service) open platform, and 1239 questionnaires conducted in 15 communities in Guangzhou in 2015. It develops a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the effects of the influencing factors on CO2 emissions of trips with different purposes. The results show that the effect of residential self-selection also exists in Chinese cities. Changing residents' preference of travel mode will help reduce travel-related CO2 emissions. After controlling the effect of residential self-selection, the built environment still has significant effects on CO2 emissions from travel. Although some of them are direct effects, others are indirect effects that work through mediating variables, such as car ownership and travel distance. For different trip purposes, the mechanisms of CO2 emissions are not the same. Specifically, the distance to city public centers has a significant positive total effect on CO2 emissions from commuting trips, which is an indirect effect. Residential density significantly affects CO2 emissions from social, recreational and daily shopping trips, but it has no significant effect on CO2 emissions from commuting trips. Bus stop density is positively associated with CO2 emissions from commuting trips, and negatively associated with CO2 emissions from social and daily shopping trips. In addition, land-use mix has a negative effect on CO2 emissions from commuting, social and daily shopping trips, and metro station density and road network density have significant negative effects on CO2 emissions from all types of trip. These results suggest that it is necessary to comprehensively consider the effects of the built environment on CO2 emissions from different types of trip, and carry out targeted intervention on the built environment in related planning and policy development so as to guide the public to change their travel behavior and to promote low-carbon travel.
In recent years, the innovation study has received more and more attention from Western human geography scholars, and has become a new direction of Western human geography studies. Taking the Web of Science (WOS) as the literature search engine, this paper chooses 14 geography journals indexed by SSCI among the top 500 journals which published articles with the theme of innovation as literature sources. The data cover a total of 2048 English literature records associated with the innovation topic from 1982 to 2015. Based on the platform of CiteSpace which shows the relationship between evolution and structure for knowledge, we made keywords co-occurrence analysis and references co-citation analysis, and drew a map of knowledge that visualized research hotspots, intellectual base and evolution route of Western geography of innovation. We found that: firstly, there has been a significant increase in the number of the published articles and emerging keywords of Western geography of innovation, and Western Europe and North America are the two core regions of the distribution of researchers. Recent research points to hot keywords including "technology", "spillover", "cluster", "research and development", and "entrepreneurship". Secondly, the geography of innovation has an obvious evolution subject, but its research contents are broad, and the research topics have not yet focused on. "Global city", "global buzz", "spatialization pattern", "industries", "life-cycle", "Cambridge region", "knowledge", "industrial development", and "regional innovation strategies" are 9 hot topics based on the 32 most cited articles. Thirdly, the development of geography of innovation follows the orientation of economic geography, and is especially affected by the development of the new regionalism, turn trends and evolutionary economic geography, which has shown a clear evolution.
China is now experiencing rapid urbanizatioin. Powerful tools are required to assess its urban spatial policies toward a more competitive and sustainable development paradigm. This study develops a Land Use Transport Interaction (LUTI) model to evaluate the urban activity impacts of urban land-use policies. The model consists of four sub-models, i.e., transport, residential location, employment location and real estate rent. It is then applied to Beijing metropolitan area to forecast the urban activity evolution trend based on the land use policies between 2009 and 2013. The modeling results show that more and more residents and employers in the city choose to stay in the outskirts, and new centers have gradually emerged to share the services originally delivered by central Beijing. The general trend verifies the objectives of the government plan to develop more sub-centers around Beijing. The proposed activity-based model provides a distinct tool for the urban spatial policy makers in China. Further research is also discussed in the end.
