In the process of rapid industrialization and urbanization, important transformations have taken place in the development of rural China, which resulted in the diversification and differentiation of rural residential land use. This change demands immediate micro-scale research on the evolution of rural settlements. Existing micro-scale research on rural settlements has focused on their structural and functional characteristics and change, characteristics and mechanism of rural hollowing, and structure and change of the cultural landscape of rural settlements. Rural residential land use is related to the change of livelihoods of rural households. In urban-rural fringe and economically developed areas, non-farming employment of rural residents prompts the diversification as well as non-agriculturalization of rural residential land. In traditional agricultural regions, a large number of laborers flows to cities and towns, leading to the disused of rural residential land. Microscopic study of rural residential land has mainly focused on the description and explanation of related phenomena. It should be gradually expanded and deepened to practical applications in the future. Research on the transformation of rural residential land and patterns of change, the effect on society, economy, and environment, and the reconstruction of rural settlements for the implementation of national development strategies should be promoted in order to provide decision support for rural residential land consolidation and contracted land registration under the background of new urbanization.
Rapid and high intensity urbanization is currently occurring in the world, resulting in increasingly more serious urban heat island phenomenon. Urban heat islands have direct and indirect impacts on various eco-environment factors of cities, regions, and the world, which are closely related to the human well-being. Remote sensing method has been widely used for Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) monitoring for its obvious advantages, such as wide range, huge amount of information, short observation cycle, among others. Considering the issue that existing studies have not systematically summarized the thermal infrared data sources, monitoring indicators, and the spatiotemporal variation patterns of monitoring results, and the related information needs to be updated, this study conducted a review of progress of surface urban heat island monitoring by remote sensing. First, we presented and classified the thermal infrared remote sensing data sources for the SUHI monitoring by remote sensing in previous studies. Second, we divided the monitoring indicators into three types, including land cover types-driven kind, Land Surface Temperature (LST) pattern-driven kind, and complex kind driven by both land cover types and LST pattern. We introduced the main indicator calculation methods and application cases in detail and analyzed their advantages and disadvantages. We then reviewed the intraannual spatiotemporal change regulation of the SUHI from three aspects, including diurnal variation, nocturnal variation, and comparative variations between day and night. We also considered the patterns of interannual changes. Finally, we proposed several key issues and potential research directions based on the research areas in which conflicting conclusions are found or research needs to be deepened in the existing studies.
Due to the frequent occurrence of floods in urban areas, it is imperative to investigate their causes and determine whether they are mainly the result of global climate change or urbanization induced by human activities. Existing research on the impact of urbanization on urban floods focuses on hazards assessment as well as sensitivity tests. They are critical to risk reduction and severe weather early warning. Precipitation intensity downwind or over cities may be enhanced. Meanwhile the increased areal coverage of impervious surfaces in urban areas can alter the natural hydrologic response. In order to reveal the spatiotemporal characteristics of elevated flood risks in urban areas, by examining published work on the topics, we put forward the following thoughts on future research direction. The first is to use high spatial resolution observation data to determine the distribution of hazards induced by rainstorms in urban areas. The second is to develop suitable hydrological models using high resolution urban land surface data for simulating the hydroclimatic sensitivity of watersheds. The third is to combine rainstorm hazards and sensitivity in risk assessment to reveal the discrepancy of flood risks in urban areas, as well as effects induced by urbanization. Risk assessment identifies flood risks in urban areas and can be useful for risk management, which is essential in risk mitigation.
Land use research has progressed from examining the change of land use patterns to the change of land use functions and the sustainable development of land resources. Multi-functionality of land use is of great significance to improving land use efficiency and promoting regional sustainable development, which has become one of the hot topics and new research directions in land science and geography. Based on an extensive review of related literature, this article systematically summarizes the concept and connotation, identification and classification, and evaluation of multi-functionality of land use and analyzes the current situation of multi-functionality of land use research. Currently, consensus exists on the understanding of the connotation and characteristics of multi-functionality of land use, but commonly accepted classification criteria of multi-functionality of land use are yet to be developed; analysis frameworks of multi-functionality of land use are basically formed, but the evaluation index system and evaluation methods need further improvement, and applied research is relatively weak; multi-functionality of land use are influenced by natural, social, economic, and policy factors. We propose some future research directions on the basis of the analysis, including developing an interdisciplinary research framework for multi-functionality of land use; constructing a classification system; improving evaluation study and applied study of multi-functionality of land use, with the hope to help promote in-depth studies in China on multi-functionality of land use, as well as provide references for the development of land use planning and land management.
Land sparing versus sharing framework is an important theory for balancing food production and biodiversity conservation for sustainable land use. In this article, the relationship between the "land sparing versus sharing framework" and ecosystem services was summarized by revealing the theoretical basis of the combination of ecosystem services and land sparing versus sharing framework. The impacts of land-use decisions such as the USDA Conservation Reserve Program on food production, biodiversity, and other direct and indirect ecosystem services were analyzed. The application of this framework in Chinese environmental conservation projects was discussed, aiming at providing a reference for the coupling of land-use optimization and ecosystem services provision. The results show that: (1) The framework of "land sparing versus sharing" was based on multiple demands of ecosystem services from cultivated land. From an ecosystem service perspective, expansion of the framework can be seen as demand change from food production alone to multiple demands containing food production and other ecosystem services. (2) When food production service and other services are in a state of trade-off, in ecologically fragile and low resilience areas, where the relationship between ecosystem services shows a "convex tradeoff," land sparing strategy is often appropriate; whereas land sharing strategy is appropriate in ecologically stable and high resilience areas where the relationship between ecosystem services shows a "concave tradeoff." (3) Land sharing optimizes the demand of ecosystem services, according to the study of the land-use practices in the United States. Assessment of ecosystem services can be used as a tool to measure the effect of land-use policies and strategies.
As a man-made spatial or geographic element, administrative boundaries, acting like an invisible barrier, influence the process of globalization and regional integration. According to the statistics of literature associated with border effect since the 1990s, the number of studies in this field has increased greatly. In 1995, the study of international trade between the United States and Canada by McCallum promoted the progress of research in border effect. Most studies in the field of economic geography that followed focus on the mechanism and effect in three categories: the puzzle of border effect, market segmentation, and the progress of integration. When studying the puzzle of border effect, researchers always focused on three questions: "what is the connotation of the border effect?"; "what factors may affect the border effect?"; and "how wide is the border?" With regard to the integration and market segmentation studies of the border effect, transnational trade was always the research hotspot. With the gradual deepening of the studies, researchers not only paid attention to border effect in the field of economic geography but also focused on transboundary differentiation in tourism geography, urban geography, and political geography. Gravity model, convergence analysis, and monopolistic competition model were chosen to construct the border effect model. Although based on different theories, the virtual variable "border" was added to the models in the same way. Social network and the principle of "homogeneous repel, heterogeneous attraction" also were applied to the study of border effect. Further research can be carried out in the following three areas: studying the puzzle of border effect in view of the nature of administrative boundary, developing the research field of border effect, and the optimization and innovation of research methods.
This article analyzes the spatial distribution of innovation outputs—measured by the number of patent authorization—in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, using exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) method, based on the statistical data of 853 county-level cities from 1986 to 2014.The results are as follow: (1) The absolute difference of innovation output growth of the Yangtze River Economic Belt slowed before 2001, followed by a rapid growth in 2012, then began to decrease again. But the relative difference showed an increase-decrease-increase slowly-decrease trend, with increasing annual spatial correlation; (2) Innovative outputs in the Yangtze River Economic Belt counties showed dispersion, concentration, relative concentration spatial patterns. Counties/districts with higher innovation outputs were the urban districts of prefectural-level cities, economically developed counties, and the urban districts of provincial capital cities in the midwest. (3) The overall pattern of significant spatially correlated type areas was stable, while local changes were significantly. Positive correlation type was dominant at the county level, especially the significant low-low correlation type. Low-low correlation areas were mainly in the western region, but showed a tendency to extend to the central area. (4) Resource endowment, education level and R & D investment, technology spillover and diffusion, and policy and institution played a significant role in the process of change of innovation output spatial pattern in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.
Farmers are the most important actors of economic activities and the most basic decision-making units in rural China and the main managers of cultivated land, and therefore it is important to examine cultivated land fragmentation degree based on farmers' perspective. This study used average distance between parcels to characterize the spatial distribution of parcels, and developed an evaluation indicator system of cultivated land fragmentation degree. Taking Jiangxia District, Xian'an District, and Tongshan County in Hubei Province as cases, the improved TOPSIS method was employed to evaluate cultivated land fragmentation degree based on data from a farming household sampling survey. The results are as follows. (1) Selection of indicators of cultivated land fragmentation should be based on the characteristics of cultivated land fragmentation, that is, the area, number, and distribution of land parcels. Therefore, average area of parcels, number of parcels, and average distance between parcels were selected to measure the degree of cultivated land fragmentation. (2) There were significant differences in cultivated land fragmentation between hillock and plain area and low mountain and hilly area. The average area of parcels in the hillock and plain area in the north of the study area was larger than that in the low mountain and hilly area in the south. The number of parcels in the hillock and plain area was more than that in the low mountain and hilly area; the average distance between parcels or the average distance from parcels to home in the hillock and plain area was shorter than that in the low mountain and hilly area; and cultivated land fragmentation degree in the hillock and plain area was lower than that in the low mountain and hilly area. (3) Due to the difference in landform in the study area, cultivated land fragmentation degree showed a general pattern of low in the northern hillock and plain area and high in the southern low mountain and hilly area. (4) Cultivated land fragmentation showed significant differences in areas with different economic development level. In the hillock and plain area, the higher the level of economic development of the area, the higher the degree of cultivated land fragmentation; while in the low mountain and hilly area, the higher the level of economic development of the area, the lower the degree of cultivated land fragmentation.
Transportation is one of the foundations to support economic and social development of a region, and accessibility is an important indicator of the level of development of transportation facilities. In this study, we used spatial and survey data to construct an indicator system that considers internal accessibility, external accessibility, and terrain impedance based on the entropy-weight TOPSIS method for Shizhu County, Chongqing Municipality. This study explores mountain transport accessibility condition and can provide some references for mountain transport planning. The results indicate that: (1) The degree of impact of accessibility indicators on regional comprehensive accessibility ranks as: transport facilities technology (C4) > frictional impedance (C5) > equivalent road density (C2) > internal connectivity (C1) > degree of connectivity with main roads (C3). (2) The variation coefficient of closeness degree was 0.5410, indicating that the level of transport accessibility of towns in the study area was very different. (3) Accessibility decreased from the three core areas in Nanbin, Xituo, and Yue Lai. The spatial pattern of accessibility is high in the west and low in the east, with high accessibility areas mainly distributed in places of flat terrain, and low accessibility areas mainly distributed in mountainous areas. (4) The area of high accessibility forms a "double axes", which is closely associated with main roads. (5) The spatial distribution of transport accessibility is clearly correlated with economic development level and the total area of land use right transfer. The results can provide some theoretical and practical guidance for the regional coordinated development and transportation planning.
Urban public transportation is an indispensable part of urban life and an important topic in today's urban geography research. Existing studies on public transportation mainly focused on the characteristics of network structure and topology. Centrality is one of the important properties of public transportation network, and is widely examined both in theoretical and empirical studies. Centrality can be effectively calibrated by Multiple Centrality Assessment Model (MCA), which is composed of multiple measures such as closeness, betweenness, and straightness. In recent years, researchers began to focus increasingly more on the study of the relationship between public transportation network and social and economic activities. As the most important financial intermediary in the city, banks and the distribution of their branches are closely related to the efficiency of people's financial activities. Thus, we investigate the spatial pattern of public transportation network centrality and its coupling with bank branches in Wuhan City. First, this study builds a dataset consisting of public transportation and bank branches in Wuhan urban development zone of 2015 in ArcGIS. Based on the characteristics of the data, this study improves the Multiple Centrality Assessment Model for better accuracy. It then examines the geography of three centrality indices by improved Multiple Centrality Assessment Model, and analyzes the centrality of Wuhan public transportation network and its spatial correlation with bank network layout by using kernel density estimation and bivariate spatial autocorrelation model based on GeoDa. The results show that: (1) Kernel density indicates a clear city multicenter directivity of the public transportation network centralities in Wuhan, and the concentration decreases progressively from the central areas to the periphery. (2) The spatial distribution pattern of bank branches presents a core—center—transitional area—periphery multi-level structure, and the regional variations between different areas are obvious. (3) There is a significant positive correlation between public transportation network centralities and the bank network layout in Wuhan City. Among the three centrality indicators, closeness has the greatest effect on the distribution of bank branches, straightness comes the next, and betweenness has minimum impact on bank branches' distribution. (4) At the local level, spatial correlation patterns between public transportation network centralities and bank branches exhibit spatial nonstationarity and heterogeneity. The local spatial correlation dendrogram indicates that "High-High" and "Low-Low" coupling are the main spatial correlation patterns. The distribution characteristics of the "High-High" type cluster to the central area, and "Low-Low" type cluster in the peripheral area, are prevalent. "High-Low" and "Low-High" types are distributed sporadically in the transitional areas. This result also indicates that the distribution of bank branches is affected by various factors, including public transportation network centralities.
With the rapid development of information and communication technology, the number of "netizens" is increasing. There is also a tendency of rapid growth of netizens aged 60 and above. Information and Communication Technology has increasingly become a significant part of social and economic life in today's society, deeply influencing people's behavior. In the context of accelerating aging of the Chinese population and the rapid development of smart elderly care, how to use information and communication technology to improve elderly's quality of community life is becoming a hot topic in geography and urban planning studies. This study chose Suojin Community—the first smart community in Nanjing City—as empirical research case. Suojin Community has actively engaged in information technology development. This study explores the relationship between information and communication technology and elderly's community satisfaction. A survey was conducted in Suojin Community from September to December 2015 by the Nanjing University research group, resulting in 212 valid samples that were later applied in a structural equation modeling. The questionnaire mainly includes four sets of questions on respondents' personal attributes, level of personal use of ICT, social support, and community satisfaction. The analysis shows that greater diversity of information and communication device possession and usage led to more frequent network activities. Elderlies with higher level of education and willingness to use the Internet are more likely to use more information and communication devices and have higher frequency of network activities. Information and communication technology promotes interactions with family and neighbors through social networking activities, such as chatting on QQ and WeChat, which enhance elderly's social support and community satisfaction. Social support has greater impact than the built environment on elderly's community satisfaction. Therefore, an effective path to improve elderly's quality of community life is to strengthen contacts with family and neighbors by information and communication technology. The result has important implications for the development of smart community and smart elderly care. Using information and communication technology to combine social networking with emotional support and social resources provision is the future direction of community development research.
