Abstract

Cities are the dominant form of human settlements and their interaction with the global environment presents great challenges for sustainability. This paper analyzes the evolution of urban form in three rapidly-growing Chinese metropolitan areas in the Pearl River Delta: Shenzhen, Foshan and Guangzhou. It is the first study to utilize a combination of time-series satellite imagery, GIS, and a time-series of spatial pattern statistics based on rank-size distributions to evaluate the evolving nature of urban clusters in Chinese cities. Defining the urban clusters – contiguous urban built-up areas – as the unit of our analysis, we estimate exponents of rank-size distributions for each city’s clusters for the years between 1988 and 1999. We observe substantial variation in the evolution of urban form across time. For all three metropolitan areas, the rank-size distribution exponents evolve in an oscillatory fashion within the 11-year period as the metropolitan areas grow through a process of cluster birth and coalescence. The analysis sheds light on the evolving nature of urban clusters that can help us better understand urban phenomena, and make inferences on how socioeconomic processes influence urban form which in turn has considerable effects on the ecology of the urban system and the local and regional environment. We show that a time-series analysis of rank-size distributions of urban clusters reveals trends in spatial patterns of urban form that can aid in the design of cities and help achieve more sustainable land-uses.

It is a fundamental work to accurately evaluate the pattern and spatial disparity of regional economic development in order to promote coordinated economic development. Spatial filed is an abstract concept to define the potential difference came from the process o f the growth pole of regional economy driving the economic development of periphery areas through transport corridors. According to the“pole-axis”system theory, regional interaction theory and energy space theory, the article characterizes the spatial field with the application of nodality index and regional accessibility. With the application of spatial field, it analyzes the spatio-temporal characteristics of macro-economic disparities, the three zones and the economic disparities in the Northern- Southern China from inter-province, inter-city, inter-county. Moreover, the article reveals the interaction mechanism of spatial variation of regional economic development, and identifies the spatial type based on the pattern of regional development in China. The results indicates that the imbalance of China’s regional economy has expanded from 2000, while the economic disparities are different at different research scales. Secondly, the internal economic disparities of the three zones showed a significant feature with“anti-natural gradient”; the differences between the Southern and Northern China evolves from“South and North are in balance”to “South is stronger than North”. Moreover, the internal economic disparities of both North and South presented a tendency to expand. Thirdly, China’s regional economic growth showed a significant spatial polarization. The local accumulation model of economic growth is differentiation and regularity. Fourthly, spatial pattern of the level of regional economic development in China could be divided into 5 zones and 23 sub-units, and different types of areas should implement a targeted development strategy in the future.

促进区域协调发展是区域发展的重要目标, 其基础是准确评价区域经济发展格局与空间差异。空间场能是区域中心城市借助区域联系“通道”带动外围地区发展而产生的“势能差”的抽象表达, 是反映区域经济发展格局与空间差异的有效手段。基于空间场能的内涵及表征方法, 从省际、市际、县际等尺度探讨了中国宏观经济、三大地带与南北经济差异的时空特征、区域经济变化的空间作用机制以及区域经济格局的类型划分。结果表明:① 2000 年以来中国区域经济的不平衡性在扩大, 但不同研究尺度反映的经济差异大小有所差别;② 三大地带的内部经济差异呈显著的“反自然梯度”特征, 南北差异由“南北平分秋色”向“南强北弱”演变, 南方与北方内部经济发展差异均呈扩大趋势;③ 中国区域经济增长存在显著的空间极化现象, 经济增长局部聚集模式呈现分异性与规律性;④ 中国区域经济发展水平的空间格局可划分为5 大类型区23 个亚单元, 不同类型区未来应实施针对性的发展策略。

Industrialization and urbanization are two major trends of China's future development. Former predictions on China′s future energy consumption and carbon emission mostly started from the aspect of industrialization, which ignored the huge amount of residential energy consumption related with urbanization. Urbanization is of great importance for improving life quality and satisfies man′s right for subsistence and development. We proposed three core items related with China′s urbanization, i.e. the increasing of urbanization rate, the improving of urban residents′ life quality, and the shaking off of poverty of povertystricken people. Resulted indicated that there are considerable room and obvious trends of residential energy increasing. Model consisting of productive and residential energy consumption was built based on the analysis, and the modeling results indicated that although the increasing of productive energy consumption would slow down, or even the amount tend to be stable, the total energy consumption will tend to grow significantly thanking for the fast increase of residential energy consumption. The peak of total energy consumption will be far away from former judgments. Therefore, it seems impossible that the carbon emission would decline in the near future for the close relationship between carbon emission and energy consumption.  At last, the authors suggest that, on the one hand, we promote green development and lowcarbon economy; on the other hand, we pay more carefulness on the international negotiation on reduction and space allocation of carbon emission, in order to avoid putting ourselves in a passive position. 

工业化和城市化是中国未来的两大发展趋势。以往对中国未来能源消费及碳排放的预测大都是从工业化层面出发，忽略了城市化过程导致的生活能源消费的巨大增量。推动城市化进程是提升生活质量、满足人的基本权利的重要手段；立足城市化进程，保障人均能源消费及碳排放空间是确保人人享有基本的生存权和发展权的重要基础。从对中国城市化进程的发展态势出发，提出了城市化率提高、城镇居民生活质量提升、贫困人口脱贫等3个核心问题，并就这3个领域生活能源消费现状及未来可能导致的能源消费增量进行了定量分析；结果发现，无论是城镇人口还是农村人口，其生活能源消费都有大量增长的趋势。在此基础上，构建了以生产能源消费和生活能源消费两大分类为主体的中国未来能源消费预测模型，模型预测结果表明：虽然未来（2010—2050年）生产领域能源消费存在减缓增长甚至趋于稳定的态势，但是由于生活能源的急剧增长，总能源消费量仍然呈现出持续增长的趋势，在很长的时期内不会出现下降的可能。由于碳排放同能源消费密切相关，因而近期难以依赖能源消费量的下降实现碳排放量的降低。最后指出，我国一方面要积极践行绿色发展，走低碳经济之路；另一方面，在与能源消费密切相关的碳减排及排放空间谈判问题上，应该要有清醒的认识，以数据说话，争取最大利益。

The study of spatial relations and information flows in cyberspace lays the foundation for the study of geospatial evolution under the influence of ICTs. Information flows among several cities can be obtained through the microblog platform. The research deals with statistics collected from Sina micro-blog as follows. First, select 51 representative Chinese cities to a certain standard taking the easy access of research data into account. Second, select 20 Sina micro-blog users in each of these 51 cities and record their geographical attribute statistics. Then analyze Internet information contacts state and spatial configuration among these Chinese cities from the perspective of geography. This paper uses the flow analysis to project the abstract spatial relations on the concrete geographical space and compare the spatial configuration of Internet information contacts among Chinese cities with the spatial pattern of regional economic and social development so as to explain the formation mechanism. The results demonstrate that: The Internet information relations among Chinese cities present a “one superpower and many” polarized spatial asymmetric configuration. The information asymmetric configuration in cyberspace has close correlation with the distance and the social and economic development levels in geographical space, which expresses as: The Internet information asymmetric degree of one city to the others is relatively consistent with the economic and social development levels of it; With the distance between two cities rising, the impact of the economic and social development gaps on their Internet information asymmetric degree will reduce; At a certain distance, the Internet information asymmetric degree between two cities is relatively consistent with their economic and social development gap; The Internet information asymmetric relations among the eastern, central and western China are relatively consistent with their economic and social development gradient.

网络信息空间的空间关系及信息流研究为信息化影响下的地理空间演变研究奠定基础。借助微博这一新兴网络信息传播平台获取中国城市间网络信息联系数据，采用流分析方法呈现城市间网络信息联系的空间格局。研究发现：中国城市网络信息关系呈现出“一超多强”的空间极化不对称格局。网络空间不对称格局与地理距离、经济社会发展水平存在密切关联性，表现为：城市对外网络信息总不对称度与其经济社会发展水平的相对一致性；经济社会发展差距对城市间网络信息不对称程度影响的距离衰减性；城市间网络信息不对称程度与经济社会发展差距的相对一致性；东、中、西部三大地区间网络信息不对称关系与经济发展梯度的相对一致性。

The study of the spatial structure of city tourism is receiving increasing attention but methodology so far has used qualitative rather than quantitative methods. This paper applies an accessibility and analysis information system based on calculations of optimal road routes and times to scenic spots in Nanjing. This enabled the construction of time contour, diffusion and service range maps and diagrams. The study found that over 80% of the region had access to Nanjing's scenic spots in less than 40 minutes. However, downtown scenic spots were found to be much more accessible than those on the periphery of the city. At county level, accessibility to the city's downtown scenic spots shows a concentric pattern. Due to the disparities in intra-regional accessibility, the paper suggests the development of scenic spots in a recreational belt around the city to optimize their spatial distribution, particularly in Liuhe, Pukou, and Jiangning districts.

运用旅游景点可达性方法来定量地研究城市旅游空间结构,开发基于最短时间路径选择算法的旅游景点可达性计算与分析信息系统,基于南京市区的公路路网结构,对南京市区旅游景点可达性做了实证研究,生成了景点可达性的分值扩散图、时间等值线图、旅游景点服务范围图和以乡镇为基本计算单元的景点可达性图。通过对生成图表的分析,笔者发现:南京市区旅游景点整体可达性较好,80.59%的区域景点可达性在40min之内,但其内部差异也比较明显,中心主城区景点可达性较好,外围地区特别是边界地区景点可达性较差,最差地区为103min39s,通过对乡镇为基本计算单元的整体景点可达性的等级分析,发现南京市区景点可达性在地域分布上呈现以主城区为中心的圈层空间结构。在上述分析的基础上,将南京市区分为主城区、近郊区、远郊区三个区域,根据三个地区各自特点制定了相应的景点可达性优化目标,并给出了优化措施。

Hinterland supplies resources for the economic activities of central cities, so the range and the quality of hinterland are very important to city's development. However, the existing hinterland delimitation models are not enough to explain and analyze the complexities of urban system in China for their lack of maneuverability and their limit to only one indicator. In this paper, complex components for calculating the urban synthetical scale value are selected, with consideration to the following five specific aspects, i.e., population, economy, commerce, traffic and government capability, and the value is calculated by means of principal component analysis. Then, China is divided into 338828 grids, the scale of which is 5 km ×5 km, with the support of ArcGIS software. The field-strength of each grid influenced by cities at prefecture level or above in China can also be calculated. Meanwhile, each grid is allocated to exclusive city in the light of "maximal field-strength choosing" principle, and then, the hinterland area of 283 cities at prefecture level or above in 2004 in China can be delimitated automatically. Finally, the coherence and difference between hinterland area and administrative division are studied by overlaying these areas with province boundaries in order to provide scientific basis for adjustment of administrative division and delimitation of urban economic region. Results show that (1) the difference of urban hinterland cities was obvious among the cities at prefecture level or above in China, and the concrete facts show that hinterland area of the western cities is larger than that of the eastern ones, in which the maximum hinterland area is 5488 times of the minimum one. (2) The relationships between urban hinterlands are identified as four types: coexistence, inclusion, semi-inclusion and competition. (3) The coincidence degree between urban hinterland areas and their administrative division is lower. On the basis of measurement and analysis for urban hinterland, a three-level zoning project of urban economic regions of the whole country is put forward. According to the project, the first-level division includes North Region, Middle-and-east Region and South Region; the second-level division includes 11 regions, which are North China, Northeast China, East China, Shandong, Fujian, Central China, South China, Southwest China, Tibet, Northwest China and Xinjiang; and the third-level division is comprised of 38 districts, which are named after cities at provincial capital level or above. The measurement results also indicate that application of GIS spatial analysis methods to delimitate urban hinterland is convenient, precise and feasible, which can be an alternative approach of urban economic region division and urban system planning.

一个明确而又合理的城市腹地范围, 是保证一定区域内各城市实现合理功能整合的关 键, 也是对城市经济区进行各项研究的基础。通过构建衡量城市综合规模的指标体系, 运用 主成分分析法计算中国283 个地级及以上城市的规模值。在GIS 软件支持下, 将中国划分为 5 km×5 km 的格网, 利用场强模型, 对2004 年283 个地级及以上城市的腹地进行了划分, 比较腹地的范围及相互关系, 并与省域和市域行政范围进行了叠合分析, 实现了城市腹地测 定、分析的可视化。结果表明: 中国地级及以上城市规模值差异较大, 最大和最小城市规模 相差达284 倍。场强值分布呈现明显的东、中、西递减的分异特征, 与经济发展的梯度差异 一致。中、东部的城市影响力的弱势区域全部分布在省域交界地带, 在场强值大于12 的级别 上, 东、中部城市的场强影响范围连成一片。各城市腹地范围相差亦较大, 最大和最小城市 腹地相差达5488 倍。各城市在地理位置上不一定位于其腹地的几何中心, 偏移比较大的城市 往往成对分布。城市腹地与省域行政范围吻合度较差, 根据腹地在市域行政范围内的面积比 例, 将城市分为4 类, 并提出相应的空间发展策略。依据腹地的分析结果将全国划分为3 个 一级城市经济区、11 个二级区和38 个三级区。