With the rapid increase of productivity, the intense conflict between human and environment has given birth to the discipline of spatial planning. As an indispensable tool for reconciling man-land relationship, high-quality spatial planning is essential for the reasonable utilization of space resources and the promotion of sustainable socio-economic development. Adapting to the rules of man-land interaction is the premise of conducting high-quality spatial planning, which is unachievable without the support of geography. Using bibliometric and typical case analysis method, this study conducts an in-depth analysis of researches and practices on foreign spatial planning from the perspective of geography. The main findings were demonstrated as follows: (1) as a science focusing on "space", geographical theories and methods are indispensable in the reform of spatial planning. Traditional geographical theories still play a pivotal role in spatial planning, while the post-structuralist geographical theories such as relational geography are increasingly applied. Currently, the traditional spatial planning based on an isolated perspective and linear growth can hardly meet the requirements of socio-economic development, while the geographical perspective based on the relationship network combined with multiple developmental trajectories may be conducive to promoting the rationalization of spatial planning. (2) A country's geographical research will greatly affect its spatial planning. For example, the central place theory has made Germany one of the countries with the most balanced spatial development, while the geographical research achievements in Japan have supported the formation of the territorial development pattern dominated by three urban agglomerations. Thus, improving the geographical research level is a cornerstone to promote the healthy development of spatial planning. For China, in the process of promoting the localization of foreign theories, geographers should proceed from the perspective of man-land relationship areal system, in order to provide scientific guidance for resolving unprecedented fierce conflicts between human and environment. (3) Because of the regionality, comprehensiveness, complexity and multi-scale characteristics of the man-land relationship areal system, the construction of a spatial planning system with distinct levels and complementary functions is the guarantee for the operability of spatial planning. Overall, as a science of humanistic pragmatism, geography ought to propose scientific and reasonable policy suggestions aimed at the major national need—the reform of spatial planning, through innovative theories, methods and technological approaches that root in real-world situations, thus contributing to the harmonious development of man-land relationship.

After the release of the Sixth Census Data, more research results have been achieved about the socio-spatial structure in urban China based on the method of factor ecology analysis. However, methodological innovation needs to be promoted. In this paper, combining census data with big data, with the aid of the methods of grid processing and calculation of accessibility of public service facilities, the authors try to interpret the quality of life of urban residents from both the internal and the external environments of residence, and to reveal the relationship between the spatial structure of quality of life and the socio-economic status of urban residents. Taking Changzhou City of Jiangsu province as a case study, first of all, the authors extract the housing data from the Sixth Census, and the data of facilities from the urban POI data of Baidu maps. And then, factor analysis, cluster analysis, accessibility analysis and other methods are used to identify the spatial structure of urban residents' quality of life and reveal some characteristics of urban social space from the viewpoint of socio-spatial dialectic. The results suggest that the spatial structure of the quality of life of residents in Changzhou based on residential environment shows a clear pattern of overlap between the circular structure and the fan-shaped one. In addition, there is a spatial coupling between the spatial structure of urban residents' quality of life and their socioeconomic attributes, that is, residents with different social and economic attributes have some differences in their quality of life. The formation of an interactive relationship between these two aspects is the result of a combination of administrative, market and spatial factors, which may lead to overcrowding in the old city, fire safety problems in living and production buildings, traffic congestion problems caused by tidal commuting, social isolation, unreasonable distribution of public service facilities, and other socio-spatial effects. Its enlightenment for urban planning and management lies in the following aspects including the dispersal of the old city, focusing on fire safety in certain areas, perfecting the transportation links between central and peripheral areas, preventing the emergence of social isolation in the high-tech zones, and improving the public service facilities in rural areas.

Walking, as both a major mode of transport and the most common form of every-day physical activity, deserves further attention in urban geography and public health studies. The control of self-selection has not attracted enough attention in the empirical studies in China, and there is insufficient research on the behavior of distinguishing different walking purposes. Based on the micro survey data of the built environment and residents' travel behavior in Xi'an city in 2014, the quasi-experimental study design of matching case control was adopted. By controlling the self-selection effect brought by travel attitude, this paper explored and distinguished the impact of urban rail transit itself and built environment on walking behavior. Research findings are listed as follows. (1) Self-selection factors such as travel attitude and preference have a critical influence on individual walking behavior. (2) After controlling of individual socio-economic attributes and self-selection factors, the respondents' perception of built environment greatly affected the walking frequency. (3) There is a certain difference of the impact of objective built environment variables on walking behavior between China and developed countries. No significant effect of density was found in walking frequency models of transport or leisure walking. The number of shopping stores and the number of bus stations in the objective built environment variables has a significant positive effect on the transport walking frequency. However, for leisure walking, these built environment variables do not have significant impact. (4) Subway has a significant independent influence on the transport walking frequency. These conclusions can help to further understand the influencing factors and mechanism behind urban residents' pedestrian travel behavior and provide enlightenment for urban transportation and urban planning policies that guide urban residents to green and healthy travel by optimizing urban land use planning.

The construction of the modern rural governance system becomes an important part in promoting the urban-rural integration development and rural vitalization. Solving systemic problems such as limited development space, unclear ownership relationship and inefficient organization in the process of using rural space has become the primary task of rural spatial governance. Based on the breakthrough of the comprehensive governance of "matter-ownership-organization" in rural space, this paper attempts to analyze the mechanism of rural space governance in promoting rural space restructuring, ownership reshaping and organizational system reconstruction, and further explores the feasible path of rural space governance to optimize the urban-rural pattern, improve the urban-rural interaction, and promote the urban-rural integration development. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Physical space governance facilitates the optimization of rural spatial structure, the space ownership governance safeguards the development rights of different stakeholders, and the space organization governance enhances rural organizational capabilities. The comprehensive governance of "matter-ownership-organization" in rural space helps to impel the restructuring of rural space, the reshaping of ownership relations and the reconstructing of organizational system, to achieve the goals of the modern rural space governance system with clear rural space ownership. (2) The "population-land-industry" transformation path guided by rural space governance creates conditions for the analysis of "deepening space governance-activating rural space-optimizing human-land relationship-improving the urban-rural pattern". (3) Rural space governance promotes the continuous evolution of urban-rural development, and the improvement of urban-rural interaction becomes an important basis for upgrading urban-rural integration development and solving the dilemma of rural development. Finally, this paper constructs an analytical framework and feasible path for the interaction between rural space governance and the urban-rural integration development, and explores the internal relationship and research trends of rural space governance and territory spatial planning.

Based on the objective-weight value-assigning method, by means of establishing one comprehensive index system from four dimensions, namely natural endowment, flow input, output capacity and facilities' mechanism, this paper makes a series of experimental tests on the actual agricultural competitiveness within the 29 provincial-level areas of China from 2000 to 2016. And with application of spatial measurement model, it also makes a profound analysis upon spatio-temporal evolving rules and factors influencing China's agricultural competitiveness in hope for offering certain theoretical supports for formulating a series of targeted and differentiated agricultural competitiveness upgrading policies in the near future. The results of analysis show that: (1) China's agricultural competitiveness, featured by obvious spatial auto-correlation, is on the rise. The spatial spillover intensity presents an inverted "U-shaped" pattern. And the two sub-competitiveness indexes, namely flow input and output capacity, still keep on the upside. The overall resource endowment is relatively stable and the facilities' mechanism is witnessing a fluctuant increasing process. (2) The agricultural competitiveness in the central and western provinces continues to decline as that in the eastern provinces rises rapidly, which presents an apparent polarization. And the local-spatial clustering pattern is dominated by HH clustering mode and LL clustering mode with the characteristics of stronger stability and serious path dependency. (3) Multiple factors, including farmers' income, household-consuming level, economic basis, R&D input, planting structure and grain-variety selection, have direct effects on the spatio-temporal evolution of provincial agricultural competitiveness. At the same time, the above factors have indirect spillover effects on other provinces. (4) We should give full play of the current demonstration effect and diffusion effect brought by the agricultural competitiveness and related influencing factors to push future optimal allocation of agricultural resources, promote subsequent rational flow of the existing agricultural producing factors and plan finally-balanced development of agricultural competitiveness.

China is experiencing rapid urbanization. It is of great significance to clarify the characteristics of urban spatial expansion and its evolution law for regional coordinated development. Urbanization involves many aspects such as economy and population. However, current researches still face challenges in comprehensively reflecting the spatial pattern, evolution process, and intrinsic mechanism of regional urbanization, and they cannot effectively reveal and quantify the spatial correlation and evolution process of regional urbanization. Based on the data of economy, population and urban space in the Yangtze River Delta region from 1995 to 2015, this paper used spatial polarization and diffusion theory to quantitatively analyze the spatial evolution process and characteristics of urbanization. The results showed that: (1) The characteristics of urbanization level in the study area were obvious. Shanghai was at the first level, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Suzhou were at the second level, and the rest of the cities were at the third, fourth and fifth levels. The spatial correlation intensity of urbanization shows that the high-value level was concentrated in the eastern part of the region and 10 cities, such as Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou, constituted the most intensive urbanization development spatial network. (2) During the study period, the spatial polarization and spatial diffusion characteristics existed simultaneously in the Yangtze River Delta region. During the study period, a diffused region always rapidly presented a patttern of polarization in space, then the polarization weakened and turned into a new diffusion phase. It is most obvious in Nanjing and Hangzhou among all the 41 cities. Our findings completely demonstrate that the spatial correlation among cities is changing over time. This study also explored the driving mechanism of regional urbanization, indicating that industrial upgrading and transfer within the study area is the main endogenous driving force for spatial polarization or diffusion. Our study has important theoretical and practical value for future regional development planning.

Climate change caused by CO₂ emissions has become an environmental issue globally in recent years, and improving carbon emission performance is an important way to reduce carbon emissions. Although some scholars have discussed the carbon emission performance at the national scale and industry level, literature lacks studies at the city- level due to a limited availability of statistics on energy consumptions. In this study, based on China's city-level remote sensing carbon emissions from 1992 to 2013, we used the super-efficiency SBM model to measure the urban carbon emission performance, and the traditional Markov probability transfer matrix and spatial Markov probability transfer matrix are constructed to explore the spatio-temporal dynamic evolution characteristics of urban carbon emission performance in China for the first time and to predict its long-term evolution trend. The study shows that urban carbon emission performance in China presents a trend of steady increase in the fluctuation, but the overall level is still at a low level, so there is still a great improvement space in urban carbon emission performance, with huge potential for energy conservation and emission reduction. The spatial pattern of national urban carbon emission performance shows the characteristics of "high in the south and low in the north", and there is a significant difference in the level of carbon emission performance between cities. The spatial Markov probabilistic transfer matrix results show that the transfer of carbon emission performance type in Chinese cities is stable, thus it forms the "club convergence" phenomenon, and the geographical background plays an important role in the process of the transfer. From the perspective of long-term trend prediction, the future evolution of urban carbon emission performance in China is relatively optimistic. The carbon emission performance will gradually improve over time, and the distribution of carbon emission performance presents a trend of high concentration. Therefore, in the future, China should continue to strengthen research and development to improve the performance level of urban carbon emissions and achieve the national target of energy conservation and emission reduction. At the same time, neighboring cities with different geographical backgrounds should establish a sound linkage mechanism of economic cooperation to pursue coordinated development between economic growth, energy conservation and emission reduction, so as to realize low-carbon city construction and sustainable development.