Blindly promoting county-district(city) conversion or township(town)-subdistrict office conversion is not conducive to optimizing the urban spatial structure and improving the efficiency of urban governance. Reasonable adjustment should be based on the matching of administrative divisions and urbanization process. On the basis of summarizing the phased changes of the adjustment of city-type administrative regions by using the administrative division setting data of provincial-level region in China published by the National Bureau of Statistics, this paper uses the urbanization management rate and urbanization management index to measure the adaptability between the establishment of city-type administrative regions and urbanization in China from 1984 to 2020. It is found that the matching degree between city-type administrative regions and urbanization at county level is significantly higher than that at township level, but the gap between county level and township level is narrowing continuously. There are significant differences in the adaptability between the establishment of city-type administrative regions and urbanization in different regions. Based on the above findings, according to the degree of deviation of the urbanization management rate and urbanization management index of each province from the national average level, as well as the difference of urbanization management level at county and township levels within the province, this paper proposes the priority of the future adjustment of city-type administrative regions, the focus of synchronous adjustment at county and township levels, and nine provincial-level administrative regions that need to be paid attention to. In order to improve the scientificalness, standardization and effectiveness of the establishment and adjustment of city-type administrative regions, it is necessary to strengthen top-level planning, fully consider regional differences and improve the rules and regulations for setting up city-type administrative regions.

The cities covered by urban agglomerations are important spatial carriers of high-quality development. The relevant research on the convergence club of urban high-quality development is conducive to customizing high-quality development paths for different types of cities and promoting common prosperity among regions. This paper takes 174 cities in 13 urban agglomerations as the research objects, and constructs a high-quality development indicator system of cities from six aspects: economic development, social security, social equity, achievement sharing, environment quality and spatial connection. The traditional Markov chain and spatial Markov chain are used to analyze the spatiotemporal evolution of convergence clubs, and further examine its formation mechanism. The results show that: (1) The overall high- quality development index of cities within urban agglomeration is rising. In the optimization and upgrading stage, the cities in the urban agglomeration develops fastest and has the highest index; in the development and growth stage, the development of cities is slow and the polarization is obvious; the overall index of cities in the cultivation and development stage is low, showing a fluctuating upward trend. Environmental governance capacity, pollution emission level, growth stability, social stability, and traffic network accessibility have higher weights. (2) There is a phenomenon of convergence clubs in cities within urban agglomerations, and the low level convergence club is concentrated in the northeast and western inland areas; the middle and low level and middle level convergence clubs are mainly located in the urban agglomerations of the Central China Plains and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River; the middle and high level convergence club is distributed around high level convergence clubs; the high level convergence club is mostly composed of central cities of urban agglomerations and provincial capitals. (3) The local differences of factors such as industrial structure coordination, fiscal revenue, scientific and technological innovation, neighborhood effect and the internal linkages of urban agglomerations drive the formation of convergence clubs.

Suburban new cities often accompany the phenomenon of jobs-housing imbalance. From the behavioral perspective, against a backdrop of changes in jobs and housing, this is mainly caused by individual migration in and out during the long-term development of suburban new cities. However, many studies have not considered incorporating individual migration into the dynamic process of jobs-housing balance, and there are few relevant analysis methoeds, as well as unclear characteristics and patterns. This paper proposes the concept of jobs-housing dynamic balance by tracking the spatial changes of individual employment and residence migration. Drawing on cellular signaling data throughout 2017 to 2019 in Wuhan suburban new cities, a new analytic approach is developed to analyze the problems, causes and trends in the process of jobs-housing dynamic balance, including the synchronous and asynchronous indices of individual migration, as well as the impact index of dynamic jobs-housing balance. The results reveal that the main trend is asynchronous jobs-housing migration, with migration of a larger number of employers compared to residential migration. At the same time, the jobs-housing imbalance in Wuhan suburban new cities is relatively common, but individual migration generally promotes jobs-housing balance. On the one hand, individual migration in is the main factor in optimizing jobs-housing balance. On the other hand, the impact of individual migration out cannot be ignored, as it has driven the imbalance of jobs and housing in some suburban new cities. Furthermore, our results highlight that the jobs-housing balance in the southeast new city is more susceptible to the impact of residential migration, and residential migration is the main driving force for its jobs-housing dynamic balance. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on improving the diversified residential spatial structure. We argue that, grounded in the new analytic approach, this paper can objectively reflect the dynamic process and driving factors of jobs-housing balance, and our findings would be important in optimizing urban jobs-housing relationships and formulating policies for jobs-housing space supply.

The long historical development process has shaped rural settlements in China with distinct regional characteristics that profoundly reflect the unique geographical environment, history, culture, and lifestyle of each region. Therefore, the comprehensive regionalization of Chinese rural settlement characteristics on the basis of the regional differentiation pattern of rural settlement characteristics is an fundamental research for preserving and transforming the characteristics of rural settlements with adaptation to local conditions. It is also one of the long-term topics in human geographical studies. This study constructs an index system for comprehensive regionalization from four aspects of rural settlement characteristics: earthscape, settlement, architecture, and culture. On the basis of systematic field research results and multisource data, a comprehensive evaluation of rural settlement characteristics is conducted, recognizing the regional differentiation pattern of Chinese rural settlement characteristics. On the basis of its results, a comprehensive regionalization of Chinese rural settlement characteristics is proposed using existing regionalization studies on physical geography, agricultural geography, cultural geography, landscape of rural settlements, and traditional dwellings as references. This regionalization is developed in accordance with the principles of regional conjugacy, synchronicity, coordination of comprehensiveness and dominant factors, and relative consistency. We use the qualitative and quantitative methods of category mapping, spatial cluster analysis, geographical correlation analysis, dominant factor analysis, and overlapping analysis. In the proposed regionalization, China is divided into 12 regions and 82 subregions in accordance with rural settlement characteristics. The 12 regions are as follows: (1) Northeast China, (2) North China, (3) the Loess Plateau, (4) East China, (5) Central China, (6) Fujian-Hakka, (7) Lingnan, (8) Sichuan-Guizhou, (9) Yunnan, (10) Northern Border, (11) Northwest China, and (12) the Tibetan Plateau. The characteristics of rural settlements in each region are also summarized. By comprehensively reflecting on the similarities and differences of the characteristics of Chinese rural settlements at different scales, the proposed regionalization is capable of providing scientific support to the regionalized and classified preservation of characteristic rural settlements.