Humanistic geography is an epistemology of geography. It is characterized by its focus on self-ward thinking, affection, and consciousness. Existing studies of humanistic geography mainly discussed subjectivity of place. This study attempts to explore the humanistic features in the spiral of consciousness increment between subjects and objects. It is also a response to the opinion of Martin Heidegger-language and human are not binary oppositions. This article takes three maps in the book of Beijing's Context as examples. It compares the map illustration of the author and readers and analyzes the humanity improvement in the perceptions of Beijing's city space. The conclusions are as follows. First, the spatial cognitive process of the map drawer and readers were being conscious of the space meaning than perceiving them. Second, both the map drawer and the map readers have undergone a cognitive cycle, which is from text to text-based perception, then to thinking beyond text. This process is considered an indispensable way to improve humanity. Practically, the implication of this study is that planners should be clear about what show the progress of humanity in an updated urban planning.
Using social network data to apperceive and evaluate cityscape characteristics is a new method for the quantitative study of urban features. Taking the sign-in data of Sina microblog as data sources of cityscape characteristics perception, this study used text mining and semantic analysis to explore the perception and evaluation of cityscape characteristics in the main urban area of Chongqing Municipality. The study resulted in three maps about the main urban area of Chongqing Municipality, including the sign-in map, the emotion map, and the object map. The sign-in map objectively reflects the distribution of level of activity of the users; the emotion map mines users' emotional expression of positive and negative attitudes on their sign-in space; the object map analyzes the reasons behind the activity distribution and emotional expression to find out urban features that cause positive and negative attitudes. By analyzing the users' typical opinions on urban features designed by planners, the factors are classified into four categories: perceived and positive, perceived and negative, unconscious, and perceived but unspecified. The study provides further references on factor identification and quality evaluation to planners for shaping and controlling urban features.
Genes of cultural heritage landscape, the basic units of cultural heritage, can pass on regional culture and have become the new research direction of cultural geography. By extracting and recognizing memes of cultural heritage landscape, it is possible to reflect regional cultural characteristics. Traditional villages are the most representative kind of regional cultural heritage landscape, which embody and preserve our traditional culture. Gene recognition research of regional cultural heritage landscape could not only expand the scope of studies of traditional settlements but also reveal the human geographical features of regional culture and the sociocultural distinctions of traditional villages. Existing literature in China on identifying landscape genes from traditional settlements has not examined inherited genes and genetic structures of traditional culture and has rarely been used in the study of traditional villages. This article is an attempt to exercise the conception of regional cultural heritage landscape gene into cultural space research of traditional villages. It focuses on selected typical traditional villages in Shaanxi Province at the macroscale, mesoscale, and microscale. First, considering the regional culture discrepancies between the Guanzhong, the Shanbei, and the Shannan areas in Shaanxi Province, representativeness of the cases, balance in geographic distribution, and comprehensiveness of available data, the study selected 35 traditional villages; Second, on the macroscale and mesoscale, this article analyzes cultural environment characteristics of the cultural heritage landscape inheritance in these villages, which are found to be in conformity with the geomantic principles, the bionic design, and the traditional Li thought. Without strictly obeying the architectural shapes in urban landscapes, the location and the overall layout of traditional villages are more flexible, but still have many similar environmental characteristics as cities; Third, for establishing a landscape genes identification index system, the study divided the attributes of cultural heritage landscape into six sub-indices and 17 indicators, and applied various methods to extract and identify feature genes of the material and immaterial cultural heritage landscape at the microscale, including traditional dwellings, public building architecture, conventional custom, folk beliefs, ancestral culture, and regional dialects; Fourth, regional cultural traits are explored, which can be classified into two categories: the cultural feature of general characters, and the cultural feature of local characters. The agrarian and patriarchal clan culture is considered the general cultural character. Local cultural characters are examined in the following aspects: the military culture, the immigration culture, the communication and business culture, the industry culture, and the political culture. This research may provide a foundation for the study of constructing cultural heritage landscape genetic map in China for rejuvenating traditional village cultures.
Border is a political institution that not only separates political entities as nation-states with territorially based sovereignty, but also creates potentials for encounter, contact, and exchange. This point of view is particularly relevant to ethnic groups that lead cross-border living, whose lifeworlds are crosscut by de jure borders that impose belonging to nation-states and territorially based citizenship. Yet, the control of borders exercised by sovereign states is never complete or absolute. In contrast, cross-border ethnic groups are usually able to devise myriad tactics and strategies to facilitate border crossing. To interpret the geopolitical implications of such border crossing practices is thus an important academic enterprise for scholars interested in analyzing borderscapes from mundane and bottom-up perspectives. So far, the extant scholarship has pointed to two major lines of arguments that concern the relationship between border crossing and ethnic identity/sense of national belonging. On the one hand, bottom-up and spontaneous mobilities that transcend the confinement of borders are often read as resistance, or at least transgression, to the geopolitical order defined by legal borders. On the other hand, however, it has been warned that an exclusive emphasis on resistance and transgression runs the risk of idealizing cross-border mobilities, while the latter may re-inscribe and consolidate, rather than destabilize identification to nation-states, especially when the radical differences in social, economic, and political niches give rise to heightened perceptions of partition and thus "non-belonging" to a presumed ethnic identity. In this vein, this article proposes the hypothesis that the possibility of cross-border mobility re-inscribing borders and consolidating sense of belonging to nation-state cannot be ruled out. This article uses a case study of cross-border attendance of Huashan Festival at the Sino-Vietnamese borderland. Overall, the empirical findings suggest that the maintenance of cross-border ethnic ties and identity and the assertion of national belonging to China are two processes that are largely co-existence, even mutually reinforcing. The ways in which Huashan celebrations are organized at the two sides of the border are now radically different. While Huashan in Vietnam adheres more loyally to traditional practices, norms, and taboos, the one at the Chinese side has incorporated staged performances to boost local tourism and refashioned ethnic cultural activities to make them in tune with standards and tastes of "modern", “urban” popular cultures. Consequently, Chinese Miao tend to consolidate a sense of belonging to China due to a sense of being “modernized” and culturally superior.
The development of sensing technologies has brought opportunities and challenges for the discovery, protection, inheritance, and innovation of cultural heritage. In view of the complexity and diversity of the sensing technologies used in the current cultural heritage research, this article systematically reviews such technologies and their applications in this field. First, the article introduces and analyzes the concept of sensing technology. Second, we present the typical types of sensors and the key information processing techniques used in cultural heritage research. Third, the applications of sensing technologies in tangible cultural heritage, and human cognition of cultural heritage were summarized, including the recognition, management, and protection of cultural landscape, the innovation and management of intangible cultural heritage, the perception of cultural cognition, and the transportation behavior. Last, the article discusses the potential problems of data accuracy and data fusion. It also identifies the transformative trend of sensing technologies and applications in cultural heritage research to data sharing, networked platform, and popularized application.
Research on "city image" can facilitate urban culture perception, urban management and planning, and tourism resource development. In recent years, as intelligent mobile terminals and social media apps became increasingly popular, a large number of social media geo-tagged data containing text and location information have been generated, providing a new solution for city image perception studies. This article uses the social media geo-tagged data (
This article analyzes perceptions concerning cultural heritage sites along the central axis of Beijing from community, temporal, and spatial perspectives by extracting keywords, word frequency, term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) weight, mutual information, posterior probability, and other features in microblogs, newspapers and magazines, and academic publications in 2012 and 2015. On the community dimension, through media information of characteristic groups, we found that different groups have different understanding of cultural heritage sites. The core sites of Beijing Central Axis cultural heritage, such as the Imperial Palace, Tiananmen, and Temple of Heaven are perceived relatively consistently by different communities. But the perceptions of the Bell and Drum Towers, Imperial Ancestral Temple, and Di'anmen are varied: officials are concerned with their administrative aspects, scholars are concerned with their historical values, and the public are concerned with their leisure and entertainment qualities. On the temporal dimension, changes of level of attention and perception on these cultural heritage sites are also observed. In 2015, the public paid more attention to the Forbidden City, Tiananmen, the Temple of Heaven, and the Imperial Ancestral Temple for their historical values as compared to 2012. Public perception, compared with that of officials and scholars, is more likely to change and more sensitive to significant events. On the spatial dimension, this research has examined the transfer of perception and correlation between cultural heritage sites. First, Tiananmen, Zhengyang Gate, and Zhengyang Avenue, which are connected in space, show higher two-way perceptions. Second, the posterior probability of the Imperial Palace, Tiananmen, and the Temple of Heaven is higher among the central axis cultural heritage sites, showing a cross space perception convergence model. Thus the analytical framework for perception of cultural heritage based on big data is an important supplement for traditional methods such as questionnaires, literature research, and interview analysis, as it increases the dimension and efficiency of analysis and aids to discover hidden knowledge and patterns. The conclusion of this study can provide important support for policy making in the rediscovery and protection of cultural heritage values.
Urban cultural environment plays an important role in promoting residents' quality of life and livability of cities. Favorable cultural atmosphere and rich cultural life will improve residents' health and well-being. Some scholars even argue that urban cultural environment is becoming one of the most valued elements for cultivating creativity and producing high-quality human resources. As a result, urban cultural environment catches attention of both urban geographers and policymakers. However, the increasing body of literature is mostly focused on urban culture from the perspective of "others", and few studies have discussed the issue from the perspective of "mine". Local residents' subjective perception is very important as it is an important factor that influences residential location choice and accordingly may affect a city's innovation capability. This research aimed to enrich the literature by studying the influencing factors of residents' satisfaction on urban cultural environment. The primary subjective data came from a large-scale survey conducted in 2015 in 40 typical cities of China, while the objective data came from statistic yearbooks. The study adopted a group of hierarchical multilevel models to examine the different influences from the city level and personal level. The survey results show that residents in Jinan, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenzhen, and Beijing exhibit the highest satisfaction level among the 40 cities, while those who live in Sanya, Harbin, Nanchang, Lasa, and Zhengzhou are the least satisfied. The model results show that all the observed objective urban characteristics related with cultural environment, including cultural consumption, cultural facilities, as well as historical and cultural accumulation, show significant and positive effects on residents' satisfaction level. Some of the demographic characteristics of urban residents (monthly income, age, and occupation) exhibit significant impacts on their satisfaction. Residents with higher income are more satisfied with urban cultural environment than low-income people; residents at middle age are more satisfied than the younger and older groups; while people worked in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and water conservancy industry are less satisfied compared to those who work in government offices or companies. Analysis of interaction between urban hierarchy and personal hierarchy shows that high income residents are more satisfied with urban cultural environment in cities with higher per capita GDP and more theaters as there is higher cultural consumption diversity, whereas low-income residents are more satisfied when living in less prosperous cities. This finding is consistent with exiting studies, that is, so-called high-quality human resources prefer abundant and diversified cultural and entertainment consumption. This study may contribute to clarifying the relationship between individual subjective perception and urban characteristics. Also, the results may inform government policies guiding the development of highly livable cities
Public cultural facilities refer to buildings, venues, and equipment organized by the people's governments at various levels or by social groups for the public to carry out cultural activities. Quantitative analysis and evaluation of service level of existing public cultural facilities not only can enrich public facility spatial planning theory, but also can provide a reference for the actual planning of cultural facilities and government decision making. From the four aspects of quantity, quality, spatial distribution, and satisfaction of facilities, a comprehensive evaluation index system of cultural facility service level is constructed. Using multi-index comprehensive evaluation method and GIS spatial analysis and 3D simulation techniques, the spatial distribution pattern and characteristics of service level of public cultural facilities in Beijing are discussed. According to the evaluation results of service level of public cultural facilities, there are significant differences in service level between different types of facilities, and the service level of cultural service centers (cultural stations) is the highest, and the art museum is the lowest. According to the evaluation results of service level of public cultural facilities, there are significant differences in service level between different types of facilities, and the service level of cultural service centers (cultural stations) is the highest, and the art museum is the lowest. According to the evaluation results of service level of public cultural facilities, there are significant differences in service level between different types of facilities, and the service level of cultural service centers (cultural stations) is the highest, and the art museum is the lowest. With regard to the level of public cultural services, 54.96% neighborhoods are at a low level. Based on these, the spatial characteristics of the level of public cultural services are summarized as follows: First, the spatial distribution of service levels in different districts and neighborhoods is generally uneven. The level of services as a whole shows a clear "core-periphery" spatial structure, and it is diminishing from the core to the periphery. Moreover, in the core area, the service level is higher; in the northwest and the southern regions the service level is low. Second, Trend analysis indicates that the level of services in the directions of east to west and south to north shows an inverted "u" shape, and the change from east to west is gentler relative to from south to north, and the service level rises slightly from west to east. Third, the service level of cultural facilities is weakly related to the population distribution. Finally, the level of cultural facilities and the level of services are basically matched. The level of service is higher if there is more proportion of high-level facilities in the urban areas.
Song Ci Poetry in which artistic conception is especially the soul is an important part of literary geography research. The artistic conception includes "meaning" and "environment". "Meaning" is the mood, while "environment" is the environmental or spatial and historical contexts involved in the words. Traditional studies on Song Ci Poetry often used qualitative analysis from the perspective of literary appreciation, which lacks quantitative research on the artistic conception of the Song Ci Poetry. This article establishes a spatiotemporal database by extracting and summarizing the time of writing, place of writing or place described, and emotional information of selected Song Ci Poetry. The dynamic changes of collective emotional characteristics of the poets in the Song Dynasty in time and space are investigated through cartography and spatial analysis, and the causes of these changes are excavated. This research suggests that: (1) the changes of the poets' collective emotion were basically consistent with the national development that varied with the general condition of the country; (2) the poets' emotion showed different spatial distributions in different time periods. The geographical environment and other factors caused the spatial differentiation of the sense of place. For the poets as a group in the Song Dynasty, the national emotion caused by historical events contributed to the formation of sense of place. In this article, we quantified the emotion of different poets and turned the study of individual's sense of place into a study of the literati community, and the personality at small scale had been translated into the sense of place among the literati community; it provides a new idea for aggregation across scales in the "genealogy tree" of cultural geography. At the same time, it provides a new reference for the quantitative study of the artistic conception of poetry in emotion geography.
Urban traffic hotspots refer to the areas where residents visit frequently. Travels of urban residents generate interactions between urban areas, which form a spatial interactive network. Existing research mainly focuses on hotspot extraction and their dynamic change, but there are few studies that examine the interaction of traffic hotspots and the spatial interaction network. Based on the taxi trajectory data in Wuhan City, we detect the urban traffic hotspots by spatiotemporal data field clustering and further analyze the spatial interaction among urban hotspots based on the complex network theory. The results show that: (1) There is a large amount of interaction between the hotspots on holidays, and less interaction between the hotspots on weekdays; (2) The nodes with great influence are the bus and train stations, airports, and so on, on holidays, and the nodes with great influence are normally residential communities, workplace, and so on, on weekdays; (3) The results of community detection found that there is more interaction across the Yangtze River on weekdays, and little interaction across the Yangtze River on holidays. The study results can provide a reference for traffic management to develop different management strategies and methods for holidays and workdays. Investigating the interaction of human behaviors with urban environment, transportation, and geographical regions from the viewpoint of spatial interaction network is an innovative interdisciplinary research field crossing geographical information science, management science, and humanities and social sciences
The relationship between income and travel behavior characteristics of urban residents is of great concern in urban geography. Income level of residents is an important indicator measuring regional social development, thus understanding this relationship is of great significance for city planning. Before the Big Data Age, due to the lack of residents' travel behavior information, it was difficult to study this relationship. However, along with the innovation of information technology, the use of ubiquitous sensors, such as mobile phones, has produced a large amount of human activity information, enabling the research on the relationship between residents' travel behaviors and income levels. In this study, based on the activity trajectory data in Shanghai Municipality from 27 December 2015 to 6 January 2016, we extracted a series of residents' mobility indicator data to measure mobility characteristics and conducted principal components analyses to extract the major components. We adopted the K-Means clustering method to classify residents into mobility groups and analyzed the feature of each group. Furthermore, the distribution of workplaces is shown to verify the difference in income levels between different mobility groups. Our results show that: (1) diversity of places to travel to and range of travel are two major components measuring residents' travel behavior; (2) residents who have smaller travel range and go to fewer places have higher average salary; (3) between the mobility groups, difference in income levels relate to industrial setup. These results may be useful for city planners to make efficient economic policies.
Global change is an integral phenomenon including the impact of climate change, social development, land-use change, as well as other natural and anthropogenic effects and their interactions, which has become the most important driving forces of change in landscape systems. The adaptation of landscape system mainly involves absorbing the consequences of global change and maintaining the principal functions of landscape. This adaptive capacity encompasses different landscape types and components of the system and varying degrees of change in different temporal and spatial scales. From the perspective of landscape ecology, this study takes landscape systems as the main objects for alleviating and adapting to the risks and transformations of global change. We summarize the current adaptive characteristics of the landscape system by integrating relevant landscape research such as agriculture landscape and urban landscape. In the process of adaptation, landscape system shows the following characteristics: (1) The interactions and joint impacts of natural and anthropogenic factors are pronounced (2) The internal geographic characteristics of landscape types are assimilated, and diversity and uniqueness of landscape systems are decreasing (3) Landscapes functions are much more hierarchical, demonstrating clear division of responsibilities and more strength of cross-regional linkages in different spatial-temporal scales (4) A clear spatial boundary exists between different functional landscape types, and the functional degradation of transitional or buffer zones has become more serious. Based on these characteristics, future work should focus on improving the following aspects to relieve the impacts of global change: (1) Adaptability and uncertainty analysis of different landscape types or units (2) Cross scale adaptation approach analysis based on holistic improvement of system health (3) Integration of multidisciplinary and multisector studies under the background of global change (4) Promotion of quantitative analysis method of adaptability of landscape system.
Based on the monthly maximum and minimum temperature data at Wuhan meteorological station in 1906-2015, annual mean temperature during the 110 years was reconstructed and the temporal change was analyzed. The main conclusions are: (1) Annual mean temperature of Wuhan showed multi-decadal variations. Two warm periods were experienced during 1906-1946 and 1994-2015; and between 1947 and 1993, annual mean temperature was relatively low. (2) At multi-decadal temporal scales, annual mean temperature of Wuhan showed several significant warming and cooling trends. The largest warming trends at 30- and 50-year scales were detected during 1980-2009 and 1960-2009, with linear trends amounting to 2.67±0.48 ℃/30a and 2.20±0.50 ℃/50a, respectively. The strongest cooling trends for the same temporal scales were detected for 1928-1957 and 1925-1974, with linear trends being -1.23±0.48 ℃/30a and -1.40±0.35 ℃/50a, respectively. (3) During the 110 years, there existed three abrupt changes in Wuhan annual mean temperature. During the early 1920s and the mid-late 1990s, temperature of Wuhan turned from cold to warm conditions. In the 1940s, the change was to the opposite. (4) Comparing temperature change of Wuhan with global, hemispheric, and China's country scales, the temperatures showed similar temporal evolution, with Wuhan exhibiting greater amplitude of change. The recent pause in global warming was also observed in Wuhan.
