Well-being is a kind of state of good life which has been studied by economies, sociology, psychology and geography. Well-being geography is an important branch of human geography. The concept and methodology of well-being as well as the philosophy and theory of human geography are the basis of well-being geography. With increasing attentions to society construction in China, the research on well-being is important and cannot be ignored. This paper generalizes the characters of well-being geography based on literature review, recalls and states advances researches in geography of well-being, summarizes the research ways of well-being geography based on GDP expansion, regional social indicators and degree of satisfaction and happiness, and reviews the advances in well-being geography from the perspective of health, location, environment, residence and humanism. Finally, future research directions of well-being geography are put forward and some conclusions are drawn. Above all, the authors believe that the geography of well-being takes spatial unbalance of well-being as a core. But it must be pointed out that geography of well-being in the past remains at describing the spatial differences in the level of well-being, and it is not enough. So, in order to study well-being deeply, different research methods in geography and other disciplines should be used together, and the research framework of geography of well-being should be rebuilt. Besides, subjective well-being is associated with objective well-being and it is an important index for evaluating well-being. The combination of subjective well-being with objective well-being is needed.
As the rise of global production networks(GPNs), modern logistics is playing a more and more important role for improving the competing capability of regions and companies. Yet, with a few exceptions, goods movement and freight distribution are widely underrepresented in geographical researches. This paper provides an overview of the emerging logistics research from an economic geographical perspective. Three phases can be divided according to the development of modern logistics research in geographical science. This paper emphasizes the apprehensiveness of modern economic geographical theories as useful analytic tools for the modern logistics research. This paper concludes four main research themes of geographical researches about the logistics: the attribute of logistics activities and its role in the emerging GPNs, the organizational structures of modern logistics, the spatial configuration of logistics activities and the dynamic mechanism of evolution. In general, logistics is a developing branch school from the economic geographical perspective. The paper ends with the personal constructive suggestions of the authors to improve current Chinese logistics researches from the economic geographical perspective.
This paper designed an indicator system of industry-resource-environment and calculated the evaluation index of industry-resource and environment for the 35 cities in Guangdong and Guangxi based on the projection pursuit method. The coordination of industry-resource-environment of those cities was analyzed and appraized based on the coordination degree calculation model. The obtained results included the following aspexts. (1) There was significant correlation and significant difference of industrial development, resources consumption and industrial pollution among the 35 cities in Guangdong and Guangxi. Also, industries in the cities of Guangdong were much more developed than those of Guangxi, and the intensity of industrial pollution and resources consumption in the cities of Guangdong was higher than those of Guangxi. (2) There was a negative correlation between industry-resource-environment coordination and economy development, that is to say, the higher the economy development level, the worse the industry-resource-environment coordination. The difference was evident in the coordination of the 35 cities. The coordination in Guangxi was better than that in Guangdong, with the Pearl River Delta having the worst coordination. The difference was not obvious in the city coordination in Guangxi, while that in Guangdong was distinct. (3) Coordination was relative, and there was no absolute standard for industry-resource-environment coordination. Coordination should be analyzed combined with the real situation in a certain region. Although the coordination in Guangxi was better, it was still at a relatively low level.
Territorial function of grain production in various regions has a significant spatial heterogeneity and temporal variability. To strengthen the function of grain production at county-levels, to ensure national grain security and to improve farmers' income, it is of great practical significance to conduct a deep evaluation and classification research on grain production function. Taking the 327 counties in the area along Bohai rim as the research units, this paper constructs an evaluation index system for grain production function and an index analysis model, to evaluate and grade the functions of grain production in 1990 and 2007. The result demonstrates that grain-oriented functional areas are mainly distributed in the northern part of the plain area in central Liaoning province. The grain production function of counties in the piedmont plain of Taihang mountain and alluvial plain region of Haihe river takes the second place. The counties in mountainous-hilly areas, tableland areas and densely populated city areas, have weak grain production function. On the whole, the grain production function showed an increasing tendency from the year 1990 to 2007. The function of grain production has been improved significantly in plain areas and has been weakened as the implementation of Conversion of Cropland to Forest and Grassland Project in mountainous-hilly areas. It has been shown a strong downward trend in cities and their surrounding counties as the sharp reduction of cultivated lands and the swift growth of regional population. Moreover, based on grain function index and its dynamic changes, combined with the regional total grain production and regional development orientations, the research regions fall into four types: national commodity grain base, provincial commodity grain base, city commodity grain base and general grain producing region. Finally, this paper explores the innovation mechanisms and favorable policies to enhance the grain production function of each county and to optimize the allocation of production factors, including the financial transfer payment, regional economic compensation, and government performance assessment, which provide a scientific guidance for coordinated development and sustainable growth of farmers' income.
Urban land expansion has received considerable attentions in the recent debates in the studies in geography, environmental science, land science and urban planning. The sustained rapid urban land expansion in China has led to a series of problems and many papers focusing on this issue have been published in recent years. This paper summarizes the characteristics, spatial patterns and its driving forces of urban land expansion at national, regional and urban scales from perspectives of LUCC, regional statistics and case studies. China has been experiencing a rapid urban land expansion with a significant spatial diversity since the 1990s. The rapid growth of urban land is driven mainly by urban population and economic growth, industrialization and national and local policies. As a multidisciplinary science, researches on urban land expansion in different subjects keep separate and distinct from each other in perspective, scale, methods and data. There are abundant approaches for empirical study, while few for model establishment, not to mention the theoretical research. The absence of basic theories and research paradigms leads to the incomparability of researches from different perspectives, which will restrict further studies in this field. At last, the authors argue for intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary communication and integration to improve the theoretical research on urban land expansion.
Based on the knowledge and understanding of vulnerability, this article constructed a vulnerability assessment model, combining entropy value method and principal component analysis, and made a study on the vulnerability of the economic systems of mining cities in Northeast China, to discover the influencing factors and the functional mechanisms. The results indicate that most mining cities with high vulnerability are spatially concentrated in Heilongjiang Province. The mean vulnerability scores of mining cities for different mineral resources have a descending trend of coal resources > integrated mineral resources > metal resources > petroleum resources. The vulnerability scores have a tendency to increase with the development of mining citys. The sensitivity to the gradual depletion of regional mining resources and the State-owned enterprise reforms has more remarkable influence on the degree of vulnerability of mining cities. Finally, by considering the industrial structure, ownership, size scale, organizational structure, technological structure, investment structure and locational capacity, optimization and adjustment are made to reduce the vulnerability of economic systems and to achieve the sustainable development of urban economy.
Economic globalization promotes the formation of global production networks represented by the two-way process of globalization and localization embedding to each other, which introduces unprecedented changes to territorial division of labor and thus to the spatial pattern of urbanization. The new territorial division is characterized by the scale transition from regional division in a country to a global level and the form evolution from the inter-industrial and intra-industrial division of labor to the intra-product division of labor in accordance with the value chain and the territorial relationship restructuring accompanied by the scale transition and form evolution. In addition, the spatial pattern of urbanization in the context of globalization not only signifies the urban population growth and its spatial differences, but also includes the urban population concentration form, inter-city flows, the ties among cities, urban industrial structure and its evolution and so on. The evolution of territorial division of labor has not only resulted in the changes of spatial pattern of urbanization, but also stimulated the birth of new spatial forms of urbanization. Through distinguishing the general process, the core elements and the peripheral elements, the paper puts forward the mechanism that territorial division influences the spatial pattern of urbanization.
Research on urbanization and global environmental change has drawn extensive attention of worldwide scholars. Since the reform and opening up, the level and quality of urbanization in China have been constantly improved, and at the same time, urbanization has also produced lots of problems such as excessive consumption of resources, environmental pollution, and habitat degradation. Especially in recent years there are more and more abnormal weathers and natural disasters. So the academic communities pay more attentions to the researches on urbanization and global environmental change, and start thinking about how human beings should deal with the man-land relationship. Based on the analysis of the perspectives and foci on China's researches on urbanization and global environmental change, this article reviews and comments on domestic related researches in the aspects of context, methodology and scale, and proposes three subjects of research from the view of human geography, including social life and global environmental change, vulnerability of urban system and global environmental change, and urban governance and global environmental change.
Abstract: Over the past decade, China has developed very fast. Great achievements have been made almost in every field, especially in urbanization. However, regional difference and urban-rural inequality are still a bottle neck problem for sustainable development. The urban-rural income inequality is evoking a heated discussion in China at present. The study area of this paper is Qinghai Province, a typical western province in China located on the Tibetan Plateau with an average altitude more than 3000 meters above the sea level, and more than half of the province is in arid and semi-arid areas. The urban-rural disparity is higher than the average level and much higher than eastern China. The Granger causality test and cointegration tests have many advantages in time series analysis. This paper uses them to analyze the urban-rural income inequality time series and urbanization time series from 1985 to 2008. By constructing the cointegration tests and error correction model of the urban-rural income inequality time series and urbanization time series, this paper argues that there exists a long term balanced relationship between the urban-rural income inequality and urbanization. The Granger causality tests suggest that the urban-rural income inequality has the Granger-causality with urbanization, but urbanization does not have the Granger-causality with urban-rural income inequality. Urbanization is indeed an important measure to reduce the increasingly urban-rural inequality. But there are many influencing factors in reducing urban-rural disparity, such as historical economic background, scale of central city, geographical environment and natural resources, level of market development, location and transportation, impact of globalization and climate change, quantity and quality of the population and regional development strategy. All of the factors mentioned above will have impacts on the development of urban economy and regional economy in Qinghai Province.
Researches on distribution and modelling of urban population density exist vastly in English literatures in the discipline such as urban economics, regional science and urban study. Substantive studies reveal that as urban develops,distribution of urban population density evolves from monocentric to polycentric, and functions which can describe urban population density also vary from simple negative funcitons to modern complicated functions. In recent years, researches on population density function of Chinese cities enriched. Most studies focus on large cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Some conclusions from those studies are consistent with the findings from foreign cities. (1) Monocentric population density functions can describe population density distribution of Chinese cities well. (2) The expontenial denstiy function also fits the population densiy distribution in most chinese cites. (3) The density gradient is getting small and the city-center intercept drops over time. (4) Multi-centric functions can fit the density distribution in some big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Those findings reveal that population suburbanization of Chinese cities develops rapidly, and the spatial structures of Chinese cities experience great changes from compact to decentralized. Studies on Chinese cities have some shortcomings. Most studies are confronted with poor quality data. There are fewer studies on cities. In the future studies, GIS should be applied to obtain high quality data, and research method should be enriched. Comparable studies or regional studies should also be launched.
The heritage corridor approach is a regional methodology for heritage protection of large scale cultural landscapes. Combining the regional heritage protection strategy and the greenway approach, the heritage corridor approach places emphasis on the historical values, in conjunction with ecological and economical values. The Grand Canal is one of the most important cultural heritages in China dating back more than 2500 years to the late Spring and Autumn Period. The Grand Canal is the longest and oldest man-made canal in the world with a total length of over 1700 kilometers. Many heterogeneous components overlap forming an intricate system. Therefore, identifying the composition of the heritage corridor is the first step for the long-term protection and management of the natural and cultural elements of the Grand Canal. In connection with the distinct space-time background, the genesis method focuses on dynamic modeling analyses of the constructing process. This approach is effective in illustrating the components and their interrelation to the complex system, so that we can identify the components which have close relations to the development of the Grand Canal. Genesis analysis visualizes the evolution of the Grand Canal Heritage Corridor and the function and interaction of its various components. Based on genesis analysis, the Grand Canal Heritage Corridor is composed of three major systems: natural system, cultural heritage system and supporting system. The natural system includes regional landscape features such as wetlands, forests, and farmlands to constitute the physical settings of the corridor. The cultural heritage system includes traditional hydrological engineering services such as water courses, water sources, transportation and distribution utilities related to the corridor’s hydraulic functions. The cultural heritage system includes both tangible heritages such as ancient buildings, sites, canal settlements and intangible heritages such as folklore, poems and traditional performance art. The supporting system consists of trails, interpretive systems and public service facilities. These three systems are integrated to form the natural, cultural and social properties of the Grand Canal, and are indispensable for the sustainable development of the Grand Canal heritage area. The Grand Canal Heritage corridor is a living system that provides diverse services of production, regulation, life support, recreation, education and aesthetic appreciation.
Based on the data from Jan. 1996 to Nov. 2009 and the tourism background trend line model, this paper restates the relevant theory and evaluation methods, and analyzes the influences of five crises on American inbound and outbound tourism by using monthly index. During the Asian financial crisis, tourists from Japan, South Korean, Taiwan and Hong Kong were obviously decreased, thus, US inbound tourism was affected for 16 months, with an accumulative loss of 2.22 million person-trips and 7.65 billion(receipts) dollars. The most serious crisis was 9/11 terrorist attacks, which caused tremendous impacts on US inbound tourism and outbound tourism, which were respectively affected for 26 and 15 months, with accumulative losses of 11.78 million and 5.27 million person-trips and 21.8 billion(receipts) and 13.4 billion(payments) dollars respectively. The power of SARS towards inbound tourism lasted for 12 months with an accumulative loss of 7.74 million person-trips and 14.6 billion dollars. Affected by 6 hurricanes from 2004 to 2006, US inbound tourism accumulatively lost 2.34 million person-trips and about 3 billion dollars (receipts), and outbound tourism accumulatively lost 1.07 million person-trips with almost no effects on tourism payments. Novel result is that the effects of every tsunami can only last for 3 to 4 months toward inbound tourism and 2 to 3 months for outbound tourism, while the accumulative damage of the undergoing global financial tsunami is, according to the on-hand data, respectively 7.22 million and 4.64 million person-trips for inbound tourism and outbound tourism, and 16.9 billion and 16.5 billion dollars respectively for tourism receipts and payments. Finally, comparing the influences of the five events from the aspects of characteristics, origins, affecting mechanism and wave forms, this paper provides a scientific basis for a clearer understanding of crisis management in tourism industry.
Although climate is vitally important to tourism, only a few tourism studies link tourism with climate change. In fact, climate change has to be viewed as a catalyst that will reinforce and accelerate the pace of structural change in the tourism industry and more clearly highlight the risks and opportunities inherent in tourism development. In recent years, many researchers have recognized that global climate change has a profound effect on tourism and the research on impacts of global climate change on tourism has gained increasing concerns all over the world. Nevertheless, the relevant studies in China have lagged far behind. In order to present a useful reference for our Chinese investigators, this paper systematically summarized the achievements and weaknesses concerning the previous international studies and pointed out the problems to which particular attention should be paid in the future study. Many important scientific achievements have been obtained with respect to the studies on the impacts of climate change on international tourist flows, alpine tourism, waterfront tourism, tourism stakeholder perceptions, and mitigation and adaptation strategies by using a variety of research methods including tourism climate indicator and index, quantitative modeling, interviews and questionnaires. There exist inevitably a few shortcomings in the current researches, such as imbalance in study areas and contents, evident drawbacks in some quantitative models, lack of thinking about weather extreme events, scant consideration on future variation of some major affecting factors, and so on. For further studies, special attentions should be paid to overcoming the disciplinary barriers, increasing the collaboration between tourism and climate change experts, stressing integration of quantitative and qualitative researches, and carrying out more researches on the influence of climate change induced environmental evolutions on tourism. Future tourism management and planning should consider the factors related to climate change.
The most significant difference between ecological tourist and mass tourists is that ecological tourists have ecological awareness. As major components of ecological tourism, the motivations of ecological tourists are very important. This study considered the mass tourists and ecological tourists to the Geopark at the Mount Yuntai scenic spot, compared and analyzed their ecological tourism motivations through surveys. Seven motivation factors were selected by factor analysis. T-test revealed that motivation factors for ecological tourists and mass tourists had significant difference. Finally, the limitation of the studies and the suggestions for the future research were discussed.
Based on the examination of the developming tendency of the cultural creation industrial clustering in urban areas, this paper considers that despite there are many favorable conditions for the development of the cultural creation industrial clusters(CCIC) in urban areas, such as the concentration of the market and the large number of universities, research institutions and support industries, the CCIC can also form and develop in agricultural areas. Through an analysis of the formation and development of the CCIC in Wanggongzhuang Village of Minquan County, Henan Province, the paper finds that the dominant factor is the social capital mainly consisted of relations of blood, kinsfolk, geographical locations and industries. There are accidental factors playing a key role in the formation and evolution of CCIC in Chinese agricultural areas, but these "accidental" opportunities only favor some "economic elites" with the entrepreneurial spirit in rural areas. The imitation plays an important role in the early formation of CCIC in rural areas, and imitation can easily lead to the development of clusters. For the CCIC driven by the markets in rural areas, government's timely intervention, guidance and support are necessary. By contrasting with the location factors in urban areas, the paper also finds that the dominant factors are different between the rural and urban CCIC, which are mainly social capital and cultural resources in agricultural areas. The concepts such as "local buzz, noise, creative milieu, and creative field" in the Western publications are equal to the social relations in the Chinese agricultural areas, but the perspective of the Western concepts is based on the dissemination of knowledge and technological innovation. Whether the family workshop in the CCIC in agricultural areas is backward or not, it should enter the industrial park. Such conclusion has not been confirmed. Tthe family workshop in the Chinese agricultural areas is better than "the studio" in the Western cities.
Community participation in tourism development, as an important element and evaluation basis of sustainable tourism development, has become increasingly prominent and gradually formed a strong trend in China. Related research system may know Community participation in tourism going through two stages of initial exploration and rapid development, and has received some results in both study and application, which mainly include impediments to participation, theoretical analysis, construction of pattern on community participation, development mechanisms, attitude of community residents and integration of research, and so on. The above-mentioned choose mostly west of china as the fields of study, qualitative description as the dominant factor. Although the related study has still the traces of theoretical transference and the phenomenon of duplication of research, many researches have already explored deeply into the Chinese special economic, social systems and cultural systems. Among them, there are the exposition on logical relationship between factors of Chinese system and community participation in tourism. Some researches have possessed a certain breadth and depth.
