Abstract:

With rapid economic development and urbanization, the urban area has been rapidly expanding and the urban spatial structure has experienced dramatic changes in the city of Beijing. The spatial distribution of industries is an important force to promote urban spatial structure change. This article explores the characteristics of the spatial and temporal evolutions of industries under the background of urban expansion. Spatial and temporal changes of 10 major industrial sectors in the Beijing metropolitan area for the periods 2004-2008, 2008-2012, 2004-2012 are analyzed and spatial distribution of industries for 2012-2020 is projected using an extended shift-share analysis model based on GIS. The theoretical assumption of the shift-share analysis is that small economies change in relation to a larger benchmark or parent economy in some definable and predictable ways. In this study, an extension of the original shift-share analysis model was made. The specialization and growth rate differentials in major economic sectors within a metropolitan area can be identified by making such extensions. While the shift-share analysis offers an analytic tool for revealing the spatial and temporal evolutions of industries, GIS provides an integrated technical environment for the implementation. The output data of different sectors at the county level were derived from the statistical yearbooks of Beijing for 2005, 2009, and 2013. The results show that industries have clearly shifted to the new towns, especially Shunyi, Tongzhou, Yizhuang, and Fangshan, and have extended in an arc to the south and the east; business and producer services agglomerate in the central city and spread in concentric rings outwards; transportation and storage and postal services expand along a number of axes; real estate development clearly diffuses outwards in all directions; and public services have begun to shift to the new towns, but high quality education, health care, and cultural resources are still concentrated in the central city area. Overall, the spillover of manufacturing industries is clear in Beijing. Real estate development and public services have expanded spatially as well. But business and producer services have no significant spatial diffusion. Compared with metropolitan areas of developed countries, the spatial evolution of industries in the Beijing metropolitan area is to some extent different. This study integrates geographic information system and extended shift-share analyses to characterize the spatial and temporal evolutions of industries and thus represents an improvement over previous studies that often focused on single industrial sectors. Moreover, it has overcome the limitations of previous analyses based on employment data. This study also has a number of deficiencies that need to be addressed in future work. First, uncertainties exist in predicting the future evolution of industrial space using the 2008-2012 data, primarily because of potential development policy change. Second, this study is limited to a county-scale analysis. In order to conduct an in-depth analysis of the spatial and temporal evolutions of industries, such research should be extended to the postal district or neighborhood scale. In addition, this study did not examine influencing factors and mechanisms of change. These should be explored in future studies.

Key words: industrial space, spatial and temporal evolutions, shift-share analysis, Beijing, new town