Responses to the challenge of global warming include research into the adoption of low-carbon approaches to resource use. Accordingly, low-carbon-city studies refer to documenting, among other things, the relative significance of factors driving the current increase in urban carbon emissions. Such studies refer to the cycle and metabolism of the hypothetical low-carbon city, the low-carbon-city planning, and low-carbon-city environmental governance that would be needed in implementation. These low-carbon-city studies have deployed a range of methods, such as the LMDI method, Hybrid-EIO-LCA method, and CGE. The emphasis has been put on the study of low-carbon city in terms of sustainable development and its relationship with low-carbon economy and society, and on the establishment of urban ecosystems to form the symbiotic city and to realize smart growth and transit-oriented development of the low-carbon communities.
Researchers from both economically developed and developing countries now notice that low-carbon-city research lacks attention to the comprehensive array of factors involved and that progress is limited by the interdisciplinary matters that must be dealt with, and the uncertainty attached to some of the available input data. Reconciliation of study results across a range of spatio-temporal scales is also a challenging issue. It is argued that it will be helpful to focus on the urban carbon energy-economy-society-environment system.
This paper reviews the main models used in the research of consumer behavior in commercial space. It takes a historical perspective, divides the development of the models into the stages of aggregate models and individual models, and classifies the model application into macro, meso, and micro scales. For the aggregate models, the paper firstly introduces gravity models based on spatial interaction theory, including the basic model form, constrained forms, and the competing destination model. The second part for the aggregate models section introduces Markov Chain models for describing dynamic consumer behavior, with the emphasis on the development and applications from static transition probabilities to varying transition probabilities. The individual model section introduces discrete choice models based on random utility theory, with the emphasis on the widely applied multinomial logit and nested logit models. This is followed by an introduction to multi-agent technology as a simulation tool. The review includes the fundamentals of underlying theories of the models, related literatures and model features. It is considered that the fitness between the model and the nature of the research is important for model selection. Aggregate models have the advantage of grasping the overall regularities, but are limited in exploring highly heterogeneous behavior. The advantage of individual models is the flexibility to represent heterogeneous behavior, while the idea of bottom-up simulation to form aggregate behavior requires deeper understandings of inter-individual interactions.
The concept of informal sector was first put forward by Hart in 1971, and then was used in a governmental report of ILO in the next year. Since the 1970s, the research on the informal sector rose rapidly overseas, which focused on the developing countries and regions initially. It was found that the informal sector also existed in the developed countries and regions as the research was carried out deeply. But it was different from the developing countries and regions in the way of existence and the mechanism of forming. The research on the informal sector overseas had formed a set of theory system and achievements, which included the characters, spatial agglomeration and differentiation of the informal sector, the relationship with the formal sector, the impacts, and the policies.
The abroad research showed that the informal sector was marginal, heterogeneous and complicated. This economic activity had different intension and extension under different economic, social and systematic conditions. The spatial distribution of the informal sector took on unbalanced state and concentrated in the urban high intense activity area. Different types of the informal sector had spatial variations due to the suburbanization, the inner city decline, and the immigrants.
The theories of the informal sector mainly included the poverty employment, the dual economy, the regulation, and the embeddedness theory. The poverty employment theory, also called the social marginalization theory, pointed out that the rural people were obliged to take the informal activities because they immigrated into cities more rapidly than the formal sectors could create the employment opportunities. The dual economy theory put forward that the upper circulations and the lower circulations were two opposite sectors of the urban economic activity, and the informal sector was one of the lower circulations. But the dual structure of the urban economy was changing with the urban development. Based on the poverty employment theory, the regulation theory considered that the informal sector attributed to the excessive regulation rather than the labor surplus. From the point view of structuralism, the embeddedness theory argued that the informal sector was not only a form of making a living but also embedded deeply in the modern economic network.
The informal sector was related with the formal sector in the process of production, distribution, and supply. They were competitive and reliant with each other. The informal sector had effect on the GDP, and was the important income source of the urban poverty. However, it would bring on the social polarization. Most researches indicated that the informal sector was still the important part of present urban economic activity, and it was hardly formalized due to lack of the capital, system, technique, and so on. Hence what the government could do was to induce it reasonably.
Although the abroad research had gotten remarkable achievements, it was lack of the spatial characters of the informal practitioners, the comprehensive angle of view, the impacts on the region space, and the comparative and quantitative studies.
The port, the key link of the water transportation and the node of amphibious transportation, has a prominent significance. Therefore, the spatial relation between harbor and city has covered many aspects of port city. Taking the port-city and the urban spatial relation which depends on port as the research subject of this paper, through contrasting the similarities and differences in the domestic and foreign researches and the research characteristics of geography, urban science and other different disciplines, the pattern-process-mechanism of the port-city spatial relations is grasped. The paper also discusses the port-city spatial model, spatial growing rule and historical development of cities and ports, and the main arguments in the researches on the domestic and foreign port-city spatial relations. Finally, the development process and other aspects are summarized and appraised, and the prospect and the trend of development are clarified. Suggestions for future research are also proposed.
It is the basis for harmonious development of society that public facilities are allocated rationally with the aim to maximize efficiency and fairness, so public facility location theory has been concerned deeply by the scholars from various fields such as geography, urban planning and economics. Existed literature reviews have been in the absence of the formulation of public facility location theory framework, and the related researches since the late 1990s have received less attentions. We summarize public facility location theory framework by the contrast of public facility location theory and the traditional location theory in the aspects of locational selection objective, decision maker, theoretical bases, and research themes. Based on“reconsidering the legacy of urban public facility location theory in human geography”written by Deverteuil, we briefly discuss the research themes, methodology, theoretical bases and limitations of the Western public facility location theory in the initiated phase, the quantitative era and the postquantitative era. And then we review the latest Western researches with special emphasis on the period since the late 1990s, from the aspects of multiobjective facility location models of multiple facilities, spatial accessibility measurement, spatial planning decision support system and so on. Meanwhile, we briefly introduce the domestic related research of public facility location. After clarifying the development process of public facility location theory, we propose several possible future research directions including the overall planning of urban and rural public facilities allocation, the layout of a variety of facilities in coordination, and the diversification of location decision-making factors.
Resource and environment efficiency of industrial development plays an important role in building resource- saving and environment friendly society, as well as achieving "efficiency land" development model. The paper reviewed domestic and international research progress in theories, methods and practices in resource and environment efficiency of industrial development, pointed out the weak side of current study in this field and proposed the main research directions in the future. Studies show that problems about resource and environment efficiency of industrial development have received universal attention. Studies on the content, index system, calculation methods and application have been held extensively. The relationship and the mechanism between industrial development and resources and environment have been discussed based on industrial structure, industrial layout, and industrial cluster. Meanwhile, the influencing factors on the efficiency of resources and environment have also been preliminarily studied. However, there has been no research on the relationship between industrial development and resources and environment from the angle of resource and environment efficiency. Quantitative analysis methods, such as multi-index comprehensive evaluation, DEA, and eco-thermodynamics including energy analysis, exergy, ecological footprint and so on, have been applied to evaluate the resource and environment efficiency. At present, theoretical studies and applications are still insufficient, and the research system has not formed. In the future, the research on resource and environment efficiency of industrial development and its mechanism, should be enhanced. These topics, such as testing the existence of EKC relationship between resource and environment efficiency and per-capita income, and exploring whether and how the resource and environment efficiency is affected by development stage, industrial structure, industrial location, industrial style and other factors, should be paid enough attention. Meanwhile,the research approaches and technical methods should also be improved. The application of DEA models using panel data should be further verified.
The new economic geography has become a hot topic in academia after Krugman won the Nobel Prize in 2008. In the annual conference of AAG in 2009, a special session was organized to discuss about the influence of the Krugman’s noble prize on economic geography. In the discussion, some economic geographers favored Krugman’s theory, and some opposed it. In the next year’s AAG conference, Krugman was invited to give a speech in front of geographers from all over the world about the new economic geography, which was a very good opportunity for Krugman to response to the critics from geographers. In his speech, Krugman emphasized that the new economic geography was developed at the time when the main stream economics had neglected the spatial dimension of economy for a long time. And his efforts were aimed to bring the geographical dimension into the main stream economics and it seemed that he had succeeded. Krugman acknowledged the shortcomings of the new economic geography theory in his speech. Krugman explained the differences between economics and economic geography in terms of methodology. He also reviewed the core-periphery model of the new economic geography theory and he admitted that it was still a big challenge to take the information spillover effect into account when modeling. In the final parts of his speech, Krugman pointed out that the economic geography phenomenon in the newly industrialized economies, especially China, were more consistent with the prediction of the new economic geography theory. He suggested that the new economic geography theory should be incorporated with the comparative advantage trade theory, in order to explain the present global distribution of economic activities. Krugman’s speech was quite helpful to eliminate the misunderstanding of the new economic geography from geographers. The criticisms on the new economic geography from geographer and economists are compared in this article. Geographers have paid more attention to the unrealistic assumptions of the modeling. Despite the weak points of the new economic geography, people are still working on the theory to make it more realistic and powerful, which will have the potentials to provide new perspectives for the economic geography studies. Meanwhile, the richness and complexity of the traditional economic geography studies can shed some light on the modeling of the new economic geography. In terms of policy implications, the new economic geography is criticized for its unrealistic assumptions, while the results of the traditional economic geography studies are usually difficult to be generalized due to the uniqueness of the specific cases. Therefore, people in the study of the new economic geography and traditional economic geography should cooperate in the future.
The urban-rural linkage highlights its strategic significance with the accelerated process of urbanization in China. This paper reviews the concept, research perspective and research method on city-rural linkage in order to clarify domestic disordered and confused literatures. There are three characteristics in the urban-rural linkage region: (1) complexity; (2) dynamics; (3) liquidity. Research perspectives on the urban-rural linkage are classified into geography, planning, sociology, economics and public administration. Research methods for the urban-rural linkage include field research, statistical analysis, model analysis, and literature review. The authors believe that literatures on the urban-rural linkage lay more emphasis on its natural characteristics and less on its social characteristics. Researches on city-rural linkage should be switched to the people who live there from the terrain where it stands. So the authors suggest that researches should focus on the following aspects in the future: (1) the pattern of interests, (2) public services and infrastructure services, (3) public management, and (4) economic development.
Gentrification is a new phenomenon of urban social geography in 1960s. Recently, the empirical research about gentrification is one of the hot studies in human geography in China. However, it is seldom to find the researches in China’s western cities. Based on the methodology of qualitative research and deep interviews, taking three areas of gentrification in Chengdu as research cases, this paper aims to analyze the characteristics and the driving forces of Chengdu’s gentrification. The authors find that the phenomenon of Chengdu’s gentrification trend to diversification and its formation mechanism become more complicated. The real reasons are caused by the state government polices, the institutional innovation, the industrial restructuring, firms-sponsored and the residents’wishes promotion. These different factors interaction eventually led to the gentrification in Chengdu. First, the phenomenon of gentrification seems to have the diversifying tendency, the waterfront gentrification, the new-build gentrification on the brown field and the tourism gentrification have the phenomenon as the same as the China’s eastern cities, even the western countries’cities; Second, contemporary gentrification has become increasingly complex, because different actors and locations have become involved and the landscapes produced have changed, therefore, the driving forces are gradually complicated. All of these aspects are sponsoring the development of Chengdu’s gentrification, and that means the Chengdu’s gentrification become more and more similar to the western countries’cities.
Research on student distribution is within the research scope of education geography and is also a new field of research of location theory of service industry. It has theoretical and practical significance for exploring the law of student source distribution and serving the development of schools through the method of geography. By taking a general senior high school in Nanjing urban area as an example and by using statistic method of survey and technology of accessibility evaluation, this paper reveals the law of student distribution and then defines real student distribution and theoretical student distribution. The results obtained are based on the contrast of survey data of actual travel time of students and calculated data of the theoretical travel time by accessibility evaluation. The condition of internal real student distribution is evaluated by density analysis compared with real student distribution, and then student compact distribution and student scattered distribution are divided. The range of real student distribution is evaluated by overlay analysis on actual and theoretical student distribution, and then areas with affluent students and areas with inadequate students are divided. On the basis of the boundaries for all theoretical student distributions, student distributions are divided into three cycles with different attraction powers, namely, high-attraction, medium-attraction and low-attraction and the characteristics of three cycles are analyzed. Strategies and suggestions applied to strengthen school management and recruitment are put forward based upon the analysis and evaluation such as determining the key areas of the work of school enrollment and taking differentiated strategies of student enrollment in different regions. This paper only provides a study case of student distribution of general senior high school in a city, and other schools can do similar studies according to their nature and their status of student distribution and can make scientific decision-making for school development. Location theory of education service industry is a new direction of research of education and research of geography and it will be conducive to spatial planning of educational resources and will enrich the contents of education geography and location theory.
The requirements of the resident living environment, with China's urban construction and real estate development, emphasizes the overall assessment of the location. Foreign scholars study living conditions mainly from the aspects of safety, health, convenience and comfort. They focus on the assessment and determine the economic effects. Chinese scholars study the living conditions based on the evaluation and analysis of living conditions of human settlements. Niche is an important concept in biology. With the continuous development of the niche concept, its application is expanding. Geologists apply niche theory mainly in urban niche. Some scholars also apply the theory of niche in research on living conditions.
Niche theory is applied in the study of residential zone. The community property data of the residents including residential state, nature, transport, service facilities and other objective factors are regarded as the basis for residential potential. The theory makes up the shortcomings in the previous studies of residential location. The theory combines the resident factors and objectively environmental factors and can better explain the factors that change as a result of the residents living district change. Family income and education level are the evaluation factors of residential state, and traffic conditions, location, living conditions and natural environment are the evaluation factors of residential potential. The paper builds a location evaluation model that evaluates the residential niches of 37 zones located at the built-up area in Dalian and analyzes the spatial characteristics of the locations on the basis of residential state and residential potential. We also study the residential state and analyze residential space differentiation of Dalian.
It is concluded that the residential niche spatial differentiation of Dalian presents a distribution of the downtown area and other zones from the center to the periphery, and a residential state decreasing from southeast to northwest with high and low values staggered, which is not completely consistent with residential niche.
The unbalanced development of regional economy in China has been a ubiquitous socioeconomic phenomenon. Recently, in order to adjust the east-west and south-north polarization patterns on a large scale, the government has put forward some significant strategic decisions, such as the western development and the rejuvenation of old industrial bases in Northeast China. However, due to the less attention paid to the unbalanced economical development in the rapidly developed megalopolises, such as Beijing, Chongqing and Shanghai, the gradually expanded regional economic disparities in megalopolis may affect the sustainable development of economy and the social stability. Understanding the economic disparity in megalopolis and its developing trend is an important precondition to promote the harmonious development of regional economy. This paper aims to study the space-time dynamics of economic development in Beijing during the preparation period of the 2008 Olympic Games (2001-2007), using exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA). ESDA emphasizes the significance of spatial interactions and geographical location in the studies of regional economic development. By identifying spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity, the economic performance can be characterized over time. Therefore, ESDA is a powerful tool for revealing the development of regional economic disparities. Previous studies have been implemented on this issue existing in Europe and the Huaihai Economic Zone of China by using ESDA. However, few of them revealed the space-time dynamics of regional economy in inner megalopolis. This study, combining ESDA with GIS technology, attempts to investigate the development of regional economy in Beijing from 2001 to 2007. Our method is based regional per capita gross domestic product (GDP) at a county level . The results do not show strong evidences of global spatial autocorrelation, but present clear evidences of local spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity in the distribution of regional per capita GDP. From 2001 to 2007, the economic disparity in Beijing was not improved, and even enlarged. Moreover, a new centre-surrounding polarization pattern was gradually replacing the north-south polarization pattern in Beijing.
In the context of the major function oriented zoning, the evaluation of the superiority degree of transportation is one of the ten indicators for the classification of major functional zones, especially for the optimization development zones and key development zones. This paper employs the technical processes and assessment methods in The Technical Specification of Regional Division of Provincial Major Functional Zones. Based on the evaluation of the individual and integrated indicators of the 107 counties (city, district) level administrative units in Shanxi Province, this paper analyzes the spatial distribution characteristics of the superiority degree of transportation in Shanxi Province. The study has the following results. (1) The superiority degree of transportation has a skewed normal distribution. Some 7.48% of the counties (cities, districts) have outstanding transportation advantages, and 23.36% have obvious disadvantages. Compared to the national transportation superiority degree assessment, the ratios of both the counties (cities, districts) with outstanding advantages and disadvantages are significantly higher in Shanxi Province. (2) It is characterized by a regional differentiation of“high in the north and low in the south”and“high in the east and low in the west”. Taiyuan, Yuncheng, Changzhi, and Datong, the four city-and-town concentrated areas, have significant transportation advantages with a“Da-shaped”pattern of distribution in the province. This is mainly caused by the comprehensive functions of multi-factors such as the national trunk line construction, the coal resource development, the topography and so on. (3) Roads, especially highways, is the main factor that affects the evaluation. However, the regional distribution of roads is uneven. If a connecting line is drawn from Yuxian to Yonghe, we will find that regional road network density is significantly higher in the southern and eastern parts of the line compared to that in the northern and western parts. Contiguous areas with low superiority degree values are found in Luliang mountain areas and along the Yellow River. Two dense road network belts, i.e. Taiyuan-Yuncheng and Taiyuan-Jincheng road network belts, are formed in the province.
On the basis of constructing a theoretical framework on how the airport scale acts on its relation with different spaces of city, this paper takes Nanjing as a case for empirical study. The study shows that Nanjing Lukou international airport is still receiving radiation from Nanjing city, and the central urban area exerts strong effects compared to the municipal administrative areas, because the active business economics of hinterland provides sufficient passengers and cargo for the airport. Jiangning district mainly has relation with the airport in cargo transportation, and the increasing air cargo provides impetus to the district’s economic growth. The impact of economic growth on the air cargo is not obvious. Although the airport almost have no impact on the economic growth of Lukou. Lukou provides passengers to the airport. On the other hand, because the enterprises in the airport economic area have less needs for air cargo, the economic growth of Lukou district has no obvious impact on air cargo. It can be predicted that with the expansion of the airport, the airport will spur regional economic growth and will certainly have external economic effects on the Lukou district and Jiangning district.
Disparity between the eastern and western regions of Shandong Province has been outstanding for a long time, which is the same as that in China. The regional economic convergence and disparity in Shandong province from 1978 to 2008 are investigated by applying gray correlation and econometric model. The main conclusions are as follows. σ and absolute β convergences have the same trend and display the characters of “convergence (1978-1983)-disparity (1983-2004)-convergence (2005-2008)” over the whole period. It is necessary to pay more attention to the convergence since 2005. Conditional β convergence will exist if some controlled factors such as human capital, inputs of labor and capital, non-nationalization, industrial structure and government finance are considered. Higher human capital and non-state economic development have significant effects on the regional economic growth since 2005, but labor market and finance have insignificant effects.
Based on the present crop growing area in Pujiang County, taking the investigations of the farmers in agricultural production and the statistical yearbooks as the sources of sample data, by means of the non-linear dynamic model of large extent agriculture and capital investment, the optimum cropping stability parameters of Pujiang are determined. In accordance with Pujiang County's economic status in Zhejiang province and its regional advantages, we consider that cropping in this county has the possibility and necessity of the large extent operation. At the same time, it is found by using the model that when food self-sufficiency rate is over 80%, the overall economic benefits and food self-sufficiency rate do not have an entirely negative correlation. By adjusting the areas of rice, vegetables and fruits, steady growth of economic benefits can be achieved. The simulation results also showed that when the food self-sufficiency rate is 85%, the theoretical optimum growing areas of rice, vegetables and grapes separately are 13502 ha, 1570 ha and 628 ha, respectively.
Over the past, tourism destination image (TDI) studies generally considered that the functional-psychological continuum theory could be a reasonable explanation of TDI structure. However, due to the absence of further analysis of the psychological attributes, this continuum theory is also flawed in the measurement and evaluation of TDI. In this paper, the psychological properties of TDI were further analyzed in order to improve the operability of TDI’s abstract concept in actual research.
According to the findings from group interviews and content analysis, the researchers designed a questionnaire survey of 291 random tourists in Zhouzhuang and Wuzhen, and the topics covered included TDI experience level and demographic characteristics. Then, this paper used SPSS16.0 for exploratory factor analysis, and used LISREL8.70 for a confirmatory factor analysis, revealing that the fitting degree with three factors was much better than that with two factors. Empirical study concluded that: firstly, the original functional-psychological continuum should be further deconstructed to form a function-time-space coupling structure; secondly, the coupling structure contains three basic dimensions of time characteristics, space characteristics and functional characteristics; thirdly, each dimension contains either cognitive components or affective components of TDI and should be a part of cognitive-affective continuum of the TDI structure. In this paper, psychology, geography and marketing theory were applied to TDI research. In the 291 samples analyzed, this paper concluded that tourism destination image had a tourist-centered coupling structure, in particular, it contained three basic dimensions, and each dimension was a part of the cognitive-affective continuum. Therefore, the tourism destination image structure is the unity of the function-time-space coupling structure and the cognitive-affective continuum.
Rural tourism is such a new industry which combines primary industry with tertiary industry. Rural tourism is based on agriculture, aiming at developing tourism in rural area and serving the urban residents by providing various services. Rural tourism can develop landscape resources in rurban fringe to promote eco-tourism and to realize the coordinated development of the cities and countryside. In China, rural tourism successively experiences three stages, eg. early rising stage, initial development stage and later normative operating stage. This paper, based on the background and the concept of rural tourism, comprehensively discusses the development of rural tourism in China, analyzes the current situations and the main patterns of rural tourism, and puts forward some relevant countermeasures for the current problems. Finally, the paper discusses the prospect of the future sustainable development of rural tourism in China.
Taking Beixi Village in Yongchun of Fujian Province in China as an example, a case study was conducted in 2009 with contingent valuation method (CVM) and willingness to pay (WTP) survey to estimate the existence value, bequest value and option value of rurality. Three main conclusions were obtained as follows. Firstly, the total non-use value of rurality was up to 2.116×108 yuan per year, of which existence value and option value were the main forms. Secondly, the payments for rural settlements architecture, folk customs, farming culture and traditional lifestyles, and rural eco-environment were the main aspects of WTP payments. Protecting the rural settlements architecture accounted for 15.2%, keeping folk customs accounted for 23.7%, maintaining farming culture and traditional lifestyle 22.6%, protecting rural pastoral landscapes 9.1%, protecting the ecological environment in rural areas 17.9%, and maintaining rural simple and real village atmosphere 11.6%. Thirdly, protection of rurality is critical to the rural tourism in Beixi Village, to which rural tourism operators should pay attentions. The study concludes that the protection of rurality is critical to rural tourism.
The nature reserves play an important role in the protection of ecosystem. Constructing scientific and reasonable index systems and models for evaluation and accurately evaluating the development potential of ecotourism in nature reserves are the premise and foundation for the development of nature reserves.
An evaluation index system for the development of tourism in nature reserves was constructed by using Delphi method, including four constraint-layer indexes, 10 element layer indexes and 39 special indicators for measurement. Based on expert questionnaire and AHP, the weight of tourism resource was determined to be 0.31, and the weights of the other constraint-layer indexes were respectively 0.27, 0.15 and 0.27. The assessment model of the ecotourism developmental potential was built based on a multi-objective linear weighting function.
From June to October in 2008, the Maoer Mountain Nature Reserve was taken as an example, and qualitative and quantitative evaluations of the developmental potential of the protected areas for ecotourism were made. It was found that the Maoer Mountain has a high potential for the development of ecotourism. The mountain has rich, diverse and integral ecotourism resources, excellent eco-environment, certain historical and cultural values, favorable development conditions and strong attractions for domestic tourists. However, the eco-system of the Maoer Mountain Nature Reserve is relatively fragile, and its tourism development is not satisfactory and needs to be enhanced.
