For the sake of adapting to the changes of elements in both kernel system and external system of rural development, rural restructuring is a process of optimally allocating and efficiently managing the material and non-material elements affecting rural development, reshaping social and economic structures in rural areas and optimizing spatial pattern in rural territory, and approaching the structure optimization and function promotion of rural territorial system as well as the structure coordination and function complementation of urban-rural territorial system. Based on elaborating the concept and connotations of rural restructuring and the mechanism of promoting rural restructuring due to the evolution of "elements-structure-function", the paper probed the approaches of rural restructuring from the aspects of spatial restructuring, economic restructuring and social restructuring. In order to meet the current national strategic demands and meet the challenges of rural development in the process of urban-rural development transformation, it is in great urgency to strengthen the study on the patterns and processes, dynamic mechanism, differentiated development models, rural planning technology systems, strategies and policies for rural development, and the impacts of globalization on China's rural restructuring in the future. Finally, focusing on a series of problems in the implementation of some important government intervention policies, which is aimed at boosting the social and economic development of rural areas in recent years, a critical analysis and discussion is carried out.
Research on the contemporary philosophy of science shows that discussion of the ontological problem is of fundamental significance for the study of the philosophy of science and theory of a certain specific discipline. Natural and social sciences researches are inseparable from the philosophical guidance. The philosophy of geography is the ideological basis of geography. The traditional philosophy of geography is methodology-oriented, which usually lays emphasis on "logical structure of explanation of geography", and ignores the discussion of its ontology. This article, in the context of philosophy of science, explores the relationships among methodology, ontology and philosophy of geography, defines the connotations of geographical ontology, analyzes the links and differences between philosophical ontology and scientific ontology of geography, clarifies the nature of geographical ontology, and summaries its theoretical values. The ontology of geography does not only involve the philosophically ontological belief of geographers and geographical schools but also the ontological commitment of the theory of geography. As different geographers hold different philosophical viewpoints, their ontological beliefs are different; and one geographical theory holds an ontological commitment of "what there is to be", and thus the nature and kinds of objectives referred to by the theory are determined. The ontological beliefs of geographers determine their epistemology, methodology and axiology, and the ontological commitment of a geographical theory is the premise and basis of the theory to be constructed.
Spatial differentiation of urban housing prices is the marketization expression of the non-equilibrium allocation of residential space resources, which reflects the contrast between social groups belonging to different social classes in selection preference and demand for housing. There is a certain degree of correlational coupling between urban housing prices' spatial differentiation and residential spatial differentiation with respect to the mechanism and the pattern. The paper chooses 1204 commercial housing communities in Nanjing's urban center as its research object and constructs a characteristic variable index system of housing prices. The GWR model is used to analyze major factors that lead to spatial differentiation in housing prices, as well as their combination relationship and spatial-temporal dynamics. Results demonstrate that: (1) there are various factors affecting housing prices, their subsequent spatial differentiation, and they are likely to evolve over time. The dominant factors are the level of the community, school district resources, quality of the landscape, access to leisure facilities, and so on. These may mainly reflect housing consumers' earning capacity, values, residential environment demands, life style and cultural tastes. (2) The pattern of housing prices in Nanjing generally shows the spatial pattern of "circle + fan-shaped + enclave". High priced housing mainly includes new apartments and gated communities in the inner city, communities in elite primary and secondary school districts, high-grade gated communities close to the Ming City Wall, housing in the center of Hexi New Town, and landscaped villas in the urban periphery. (3) Differing types and strata of housing communities attract and gather consumer groups with specific economic and social attributes, which makes housing price differentiation notable correlational coupling with residential differentiation in acting mechanisms and spatial patterns. As the degree of urban housing marketization is continuously deepening and the cultural characteristics and residential preference of social classes become increasingly mature, the spatial differentiation of urban housing prices is more than just an expression. It is also an important driving mechanism to promote residential spatial differentiation and re-differentiation, and can also predict basic trends pertaining to urban residential spatial differentiation in the future. Therefore, the spatial differentiation of urban housing prices can provide a prospective observational and analytical tool for the study of urban social space. It can further make up the time-lag defect which arises in traditional social space research using census data, as well as helps to predict and identify future trends regarding urban social spatial differentiation.
Although residents' spatial choice and its influencing factors of consumer behavior are traditional research topics in human geography. The existing literatures have paid little attention to temporal choice, decision-making process and the relationship between space and time. To reveal the spatio-temporal characteristics, influencing factors and their internal mechanism of interaction of consumer behavior, the spatio-temporal characteristics of consumer behavior in retailing centers have been analyzed based on Guangzhou residents' consumption survey data in 2016. An influencing factor structural equation modeling of consumer spatio-temporal behavior in Guangzhou retailing centers has been established to analyze their influencing factors and mechanism of consumer behavior, such as time, duration, travel distance and activity radius. The results are shown as follows. (1) There are obvious spatio-temporal differences in consumer behavior when residents are going to and in retailing centers. (2) By affecting consumer preferences, residents' social and economic attributes lead to the differences among consumers' spatial and temporal behavior. But residents' social and economic attributes do not affect consumers' assessment on commercial space attributes. Commercial space attributes can not only directly affect the consumers' spatial and temporal behavior, but also indirectly affect it by influencing consumer preferences. Consumer preference can directly affect the consumers' spatial and temporal behavior, and it can be the media of residents' social and economic attributes and commercial space attributes to influence the consumers' spatial and temporal behavior. (3) Among all residents' social and economic attributes, age, family structure, living time in Guangzhou, employment status, and family's month-earning significantly affect the consumers' spatial and temporal behavior. Every observed variable in commercial space attribute influences the consumers' spatial and temporal behavior to different degrees. Only two observed variables (travel traffic mode and travel time) in consumer preferences have significantly impacts on the consumers' spatial and temporal behavior. The conclusions of this paper can deepen the understanding of the influencing factors and mechanism of consumer behavior in retailing centers, give advice to local governments about commercial network planning and guide the transformation and upgrading of retailing center.
Although informal economy has become important urban landscape in contemporary China, there are fewer quantitative studies on its spatial structure from the perspective of macroscopic scale. Therefore, the feasibility and necessity of vending zones are still full of controversy. To fill in this research gap, the thesis used point data of street vendors and formal commerce in 2010, which respectively came from digital urban municipal management system and industrial and commercial bureau registration system of Chaoyang District in Beijing. Via DO Index and M Function, this research mainly probed into the spatial structure of street vending and its spatial relationship with formal commerce separately. According to empirical analysis, firstly, this paper found that most vending types and their occupied areas presented a pattern of significant agglomeration. Furthermore, the vending type which had close relationship with residents' demand showed less agglomeration degree. Secondly, compared with the spatial structure of formal commerce, street vending agglomerated more intensely in a tiny scale. Concretely, street vendors, as a whole, reached the peak extent of agglomeration at only approximately 250 to 300 meters. However, the extent of their agglomeration declined dramatically when spatial scale magnified. Thirdly, street vending and formal commerce which provided similar commodity or service had not shown significant co-located spatial relationship, but there existed evident co-dispersion with each other. What's more, the extent of co-dispersion would be stronger in a smaller spatial scale. In conclusion, although street vending presented strong mobility, it had a stable spatial pattern. Thus this research demonstrated the feasibility and necessity of setting inclusive vending zones, and proposed elementary policy suggestion of its principle and types. For example, the government could introduce flexible and fixed vending zones in order to satisfy different demands of various vendors. Furthermore, the area need not be enlarged and would give preference to the area with limited formal commerce supply.
Urbanization is an inevitable way for China's modernization and the long-term national policy making of sustainable economic development. In the context of global change, some scientific issues, such as the influences of climate change on the development of urbanization, the response mechanism and adaptation model to the climate change in the rapidly urbanized region and the strategies for sustainable development of urbanization, have not been responded. Thus, this paper analyzes the scientific problems of urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta, a rapidly urbanized region in China, under the background of the global change. Firstly, we briefly review the progress of the research on the response of urbanization to the global change, and then based on the relevant research results we aim to focus on some problems in the urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta under the background of global change. Furthermore, from the perspective of environmental archaeology we mainly discuss the evolution of the relationship between regional climate change and urbanization development in the Yangtze River Delta. We analyze the impacts of global warming, extreme climate and human activities on the development of urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta based on the historical data of disasters and environmental problems. We think that, in the process of urbanization, the human and economic geography research should be strengthened. Finally, some priority research areas related to urbanization in this delta region are suggested.
Based on three-dimensional urban building data of 2003 and 2013 in Zhongshan District of Dalian, this paper selects the three-dimensional landscape index, and uses ArcGIS spatial analysis method to study the spatial and temporal differentiation of urban architectural landscape pattern in 10 years. The results showed that: (1) The weighted average height and volume of buildings in Zhongshan District increased by 7.87 m and 277.25×104 m3, respectively. The block coverage ratio decreased by 16.27% and the floor area ratio increased by 20.67%, reflecting the contraction and expansion of urban horizontal and vertical space respectively. (2) The fluctuation of urban skyline in Zhongshan District is obvious. The east-west direction is gradually increasing, and the south-north direction is "A peak in the north, while a gentle pattern in the middle and the south". Urban high-rise buildings are mainly concentrated in the northwest of the city, and Zhongxinyujing Building, the highest point in 2013, is 140 m higher than Hongjin Building in 2003. (3) There exist significant spatial differences of building coverage and floor area ratio. Low and very low land coverage rate and floor area ratio of large proportion increased by 8.3% and -4.33%; high and very high coverage and floor area ratio accounted for a small proportion, which was concentrated in the Qingniwaqiao Street and Renminlu Street. (4) The spatial distribution of the ultra-tall buildings was in an aggregated-discrete state in 2003, that is, aggregated in the range of 660 m, and discrete distributed over 660 m, and the other three types of buildings have a certain aggregation in space. In terms of spatial distribution, the four types of buildings was in a certain aggregation state in 2013, and the degree of aggregation was ultra-tall buildings > low-rise buildings > multistory buildings > high-rise buildings.
The emerging technologies for collection and analysis of massive spatiotemporal databases have largely benefitted the innovation of urban studies, and enabled us to revisit the traditional constructs in terms of space-time behavior. On specific case is the uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP) was proposed by Kwan (2012), which refers to the spatial uncertainty in the actual areas that exert contextual influences on the individuals being studied.
This research makes an attempt to address the multivariable analysis as well as the temporal variations in the research of UGCoP. Two inter-related questions are explored in this research: First, how the contextual effects on different aspects of individual behaviors (and their inter-relationships) may be affected by the delineation of geographic context. Second, how the uncertainty of geographic context is evident in terms of the day-to-day variations.
This exploration is based on an empirical study of activity-travel behavior in Xining, China. An activity-diary dataset collected in 2013 and including 1098 valid samples is applied. The research first delineates the contextual unit of the built environment variables in two different ways: one is merely based on the residential neighborhoods, and the other considers both residential neighborhoods and activity spaces. Then, the research testifies the hypothesis about the potential impact of uncertain geographic context on the space-time behavior analysis. Also, the results on the weekday and weekend are compared in order to testify the day-to-day variation. Based on ANOVA test, geo-visualization, and the structural equation modelling, the study yields several findings. First of all, the geographic context based on residential neighborhood may lead to misunderstanding results, such as overestimating the contextual effects of neighborhood areas, and underestimating those of other activity places. Secondly, the effects of geographic context on individual behaviors show significant differences between the weekday and weekend.
These results imply that expanding our analytical focus to human mobility will considerably enrich our understanding on geographic context. The findings reveal trends similar to those observed in Western cities. Overall, addressing themes like these calls for further application of the space-time behavior perspective in revisiting and re-conceptualizing the traditional constructs.
"Dragging the Gods" (tuo shen in Chinese) is a form of traditional religious festival in Shangshe Village, Chenghai District, Shantou City, which has been endowed with apparent features of bodily expressions and thus gained much attention from the public. Following interest in this empirical case, this paper adopts multifaceted methods of visual analysis, pictorial analysis, eye movement analysis and qualitative analysis to investigate the spatial practice in the bodily expression in such festivals. The empirical evidence shows that, in such religious activities, the embodied practice and experience to significant extent have played influential roles in maintaining the time-space features of these religious festivals. In so doing, the human body has become the most minimum scale for meaning-making, in particular in the process of the practice of religious rites. Specifically, the emotional process of subjective feelings and shares in such traditional festivals have greatly contributed to the construction of place togetherness and identity; while the lasting and physical body engagement can be considered as the most crucial component that inoculates the vitality and vigor for maintaining and reproducing such spatial practices and religious festivals. Focusing on pictorial analysis, eye movement analysis, visual analysis and qualitative analysis of data collected from local residents, in particular their hotpots of eye movements and their changes of pupil sizes, this paper directly and effectively assesses their emotional practice and experience in the spatial behaviors of "Dragging the Gods". The result strongly suggests that, both inside and outside the performative space, there is significant distinction between the live audiences and the outside "gazers" from the perspective of the embodied sense, which, to a great extent, demonstrates the spatial heterogeneity of the human body. This research can be read as an expansion of the geography of human body, particularly from the lens of emotional geography, as well as a contribution to the development of new research methods in the subject of human geography.
As one of the core problems clsoely related with human development, health inequality has aroused an increasing concern in the world. Through an integration of the coefficient of variation, Theil index, exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) and spatial panel econometric model, we examine the regional inequality, spatial-temporal dynamic patterns and the key factors of the residents' health level (RHL) in China from 2003 to 2013. The aim is to provide scientific basis for policy making on regional health inequality reduction in China. The results are shown as follows: (1) China's RHL index decreased from 0.404 to 0.295 in 2003-2013, with an annual rate of 2.698%. Specifically speaking, the growing rate in the western region was higher than that in the eastern and central regions, but the there is no change in RHL in terms of the basic pattern which decreases from the east to central part then to the west. (2) The regional inequality of RHL presented an extending trend in 2003-2013. Among this, the RHL inequality between regions presented a reducing trend, but that within a region presented an expanding trend. And the growing rate of inequalities of RHL in the western region was higher than that of the eastern and central regions. (3) The spatial distribution of RHL has tended into the letter "T" shape, and the RHL presented a stepped decrease from the east to the central part then to the west and a symmetric decrease from the north to the central part then to the south. (4) By observing the change of Moran's I in 2003, 2008 and 2013, we found that the spatial agglomeration range of RHL presented a narrowing trend. All the hot spots and cold spots presented a shrinking tendency, the RHL in the west formed a stable cold spot, including Xinjiang, Qinghai and Xizang, but that in the east coastal area formed a stable hot spot, including Shandong, Henan, Qinghai, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanghai. (5) The selected explanatory variables, such as per capita GDP, per capita spending on health, urbanization level and environment quality, have significant direct impacts on the RHL in China. With the increase of per capita GDP, per capita spending on health and urbanization level and the improvement of environment quality, the RHL will be raised. Finally, this paper points out the attention should be focused on the research of the regional inequality of RHL, such as the problems of the residents' multi-time-domain, multi-scale and multi-influencing mechanism.
As globalization and consumerism is prevalent, there always exist conflicts between consumption and environment. While consumers are in the pursuit of material satisfaction, they also care much about global environment. In response to the demands of consumers, brands built up global image and environmental image to retain their customers and develop new markets. Taking an example of H&M, we collected 265 copies of effective questionnaires, with the aid of SPSS 19.0 and Lisrel 8.72, to examine the impact of fast fashion brand images on consumption behavior intentions of Chinese consumers. The findings are as follows: (1) Global cultural identity plays a critical role in the perceived brand globalness and the perceived brand globalness has the biggest influence on consumption behavior intentions in turn. That means that globalization and modernity are still the most important factors which influence Chinese consumers' brand purchase intention. (2) Pro-environmental self-identity and environmental image of brand has weak influence on Chinese consumers' brand purchase intention of the international fast fashion brand, namely consumers who claim high environmental consciousness still support fast fashion brands which are believed to intensify environmental crisis on the earth. Theoretically, this verifies the fact that with the space separation of production and consumption, international fast fashion brands put efforts on building environmental brand image in order to pursue capital profit maximization. Testing the influence of the identity construction of Chinese consumers and the shape of international fast fashion brand images on consumption behavioral intentions in an integrated model will help to understand the interaction between supply and demand and further reveal the influence of global fashion culture on Chinese consumers and the environmental limitation behind the brand environmental image strategy.
Honggou canal is an important artificial river in the Central Plains from the Pre-Qin to the Wei-Jin Dynastic Period, which exerted a profound influence on the shipping traffic in ancient China. However, the problems about Honggou's diversion ports and canal heads have remained unsolved yet. Here, based on fieldworks, in combination with systematic analysis of the historical documents and archaeological evidence, we investigated the water diversion ports and canal heads during the period from the Warring States to the Wei-Jin Dynasties. The results are as follows: (1) In the Warring States Period, the actual control area by the Wei State in Xingyang was located west of the Wei Great Wall, including Juanxian county and Yanxian county. During that period, because Jisui and Xingdu were controlled by the Wei and Han states, respectively, Emperor Wei Hui used the former rather than the latter as the canal head at the beginning of the Honggou canal project; (2) In the process of unification of the other six states by Qin State, the border barrier was eliminated and Ao granary was built in the Guangwu Mountain. Meanwhile, for the convenience of water transportation, the canal head was transferred to Xingdu, and a water gate was built to control the shipping traffic; (3) In the late Eastern Han Dynasty, Xingdu was silted by the deposits of the Yellow River. As a result, Honggou canal head was transferred westward to the Shimen stream, due to the existence of several tributaries such as Liu and Guangwu streams which flowed into it. The last canal head had been used until Tongji canal was dug in the Sui Dynasty.
This paper presents an analysis of the spatio-temporal distribution of 794 marquisates in the Han Dynasty based on gravity transform model, standard deviational ellipse and multiple logistic regression. It further reveals the relationships between the spatial pattern of the marquisates and socio-economic and geographical factors in each historical period. Some conclusions can be drawn as follows: (1) The numbers, proportions and frequency of marquisates substantially showed a "high - low - high - low" trend in the research period. (2) The distribution pattern of marquisates in different historical eras presented a highly concentrated state and it experienced a reversal from the west to the east and then from the east to the west. The analyses of the standard deviational ellipses suggested a fact that the Eastern Han Dynasty overtook the Western Han Dynasty in distance and movement rate; The X axis, Y axis and its area on standard deviational ellipse of the Western Han Dynasty continued to decline. However, the X axis, Y axis and its area on standard deviational ellipse of the Eastern Han Dynasty gradually increased. (3) The analysis of multiple logistic regression demonstrates that the most important factor that had effect on how marquisates reacted was their location. Therefore, they were more likely to be located in areas near roads, capitals and regional central cities. The analysis also presents a picture of obvious "social economy directivity". In addition, directional change in terrain factor and location factor reveals that the effects of all factors on the marquisates settling were changeable and transformed with the social development and political system. However, its correlation with political factors was still dominant.
Despite increasing importance of academic papers in global knowledge flows, the structural disparities and proximity mechanism related to international scientific collaboration network attracted little attention. To fill this gap, based on data mining from Thomson Reuters' Web of Science database in 2014, its heterogeneities in topology and space were portrayed using visualizing tools such as Pajek, Gephi, VOSviewer, and ArcGIS. Topologically, 211 countries and 9928 ties are involved in global scientific collaboration network, but the international network of co-authored relations is mono-centricand dominated by the United States. It exhibits some features of a "small-world" network with the smaller average path length of 1.56 and the extremely large cluster coefficient of 0.73 compared to its counterpart, as well as the better-fitting exponential distribution accumulative nodal degree. In addition, the entire network presents a core-periphery structure with hierarchies, which is composed of 13 core countries and the periphery of 198 countries. Spatially, densely-tied and high-output areas are mainly distributed in four regions: West Europe, North America, East Asia and Australia. Moreover, the spatial heterogeneity is also observed in the distributions of three centralities. Amongst these, the countries with greater strength centrality are mainly concentrated in North America (i.e. the US and Canada), Western Europe (i.e. the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain), and China, noticeably in the US, which forms the polarizing pattern with one superpower of the US and great powers such as China and the UK. Similarly, the big three regions consisting of West Europe, North America and Asian-Pacific region have the peak betweenness centrality as well. Slightly different from the two above, the distribution of nodal degree centrality is uneven in the world, although regional agglomeration of high-degree countries is still observed. Last but not least, the proximity factors of its structural inequalities were also verified by correlational analysis, negative binomial regression approach and gravity model of STATA. The findings further confirm that geographical distance has weakened cross-country scientific collaboration. Meanwhile, socio-economic proximity has a positive impact on cross-country scientific collaboration, while language proximity plays a negative role.
