Since the Qinling-Huaihe line was delimited as the boundary between north and south China in 1958, discussions on the local position of the line, criteria for dividing temperature zones, the line's environmental effect, among others, are ongoing. The National Basic Resources Investigation Program "Integrated Scientific Investigation of the North-South Transitional Zone" launched in 2017, introduced the concept of north-south transitional zone (Qinling-Daba Mountains) and planned to explore the north-south dividing line from the perspective of transitional zone, so as to strengthen and make some breakthroughs in the study of the north-south division. The Qinling-Daba Mountains are the main body of China's north-south transitional zone, with multi-dimensional zonal structures and high degree of environmental complexity, biological diversity, and climatic sensitivity. The following 10 scientific issues need to be dealt with in the years to come: 1) The relationship between the north-south dividing line and the north-south transitional zone; 2) improvement of criteria for identifying subtropical and warm-temperate zones; 3) integral north-south series and variation of vegetation and soil types; 4) relationship between global warming and spatial change of key bioclimatic criteria; 5) decomposition and integration of multi-dimensional zonal structures in the Qinling-Daba Mountains; 6) pattern and mechanism of biological diversity and endemics; 7) the corridor effect of the Qinling-Daba Mountains; 8) regional environmental effect of the Qinling-Daba Mountains and implications for the national ecological security; 9) significance and position of the Qinling-Daba Mountains for the history and development of China; and 10) significance of the geographic structure of Western Qinling Mountains for the origin of the Chinese civilization. These key issues are not only the results of previous research, but also the starting point for further exploration and study in the future. They are intended to inspire and encourage an in-depth study of China's north-south dividing line or transitional zone, and to provide new perspectives and framework for the exploration of physio-geographic theories, biodiversity, and ecological security, and even the birthplace of the earliest Chinese civilization.
The elimination of geography at Harvard University is a big event in the history of geography, which contributed to a key question whether geography is a vulnerable discipline. The elimination of geography at Harvard has a significant influence in the history of geographic thought. This article takes the elimination of geography at Harvard as a typical case and attempts to reveal the truth and the influences of the event based on the analysis of the stories in some references. The present essay is not just a case study of an important event in the history of American geography, but an opportunity for reflection and an invitation to learn from history and to apply these lessons to the present. The article argues that there were six reasons for the elimination of geography at Harvard, including the prevailing atmosphere of science, the arrogance of the university management, infighting between natural sciences and humanistic studies, the political factor of excluding communist influences, discrimination against homosexuals, university financial constraints, and the background of the particular period. The vulnerability of geography is actually a matter of identity, and is how to position the subject. It depends on how geography deals with its own relationship with other disciplines, society, the government, and management, which involves the scientific, social, and political nature of geography. As an independent interdisciplinary field with a long history, geography is closely related to other sciences, society, and politics. This is both a vulnerability and an advantage. The identity of other disciplines and societal issues are important to geography. Geography should adapt and change.
Smart growth theory advocates rational planning and adjustment of the structure and scale of economic development according to current conditions on the basis of prioritizing the ecological environment, so as to maximize the overall economic, social, and environmental benefits of urban and rural areas. At present, the smart growth concept is mainly applied in urban development practices. With the emergence of rural development problems and the rediscovery of the importance of rural areas, many regions have begun to apply smart growth to rural transformation and sustainable development. On the basis of reviewing the Chinese and international research on the theory and practice of smart growth, this article summarizes the connotation and principles of smart growth, and systematically analyzes the progress in research and practice with regard to the conceptual framework and implementation pathways of smart growth in rural areas. Combined with the practical needs of implementing the rural revitalization strategy in China, this article identifies several scientific issues that need to be paid attention to in future research on smart growth in rural areas. It is hoped that this study can provide some references for the related research of geography and for the scientific implementation of the strategy of rural revitalization.
Since the 1970s, the issue of gender has overlapped with the flowering of humanistic/Marxist/structuralist geographies and subsequent post-colonial/post-human/post-humanistic geographies. Furthermore, it has been increasingly foregrounded in geography. This article traces the connections between gender, discipline, and intellective history from a critical perspective. It discusses how critical and multiple voices in geography have not only developed critical discourses that made women visible as "objects" within and beyond geography, but also shared a commitment to situating knowledge, highlighted the myth of objective and value-free research, and emphasized the partial, context-specific, and interpretive nature of knowledge production in geography. Because of these, feminist geographies should not be seen solely as a separate sub-discipline, but as a critical perspective useful to all sub-disciplines in geography. "Women" was placed in the transitional zone of simultaneously gendered and hierarchical dualisms from nature/matter sensibility to spirit/culture reason in mainstream social thoughts. Thus, critical reflections on ontology, epistemology, and methodology from a gender perspective make feminist geographies visible to many post-modern approaches in (human) geography, and post-human/ethnical/indigenous/post-humanistic/post-colonial geographies were some of the sub-disciplines that chose to engage with feminist geographies. Finally, western feminist geographies help illuminate that, if feminist geographies in China can enhance their role within and beyond geography, they must be used in Chinese historical and current social and cultural contexts. These contexts must be examined from a gender perspective, preferably at present.
The state space has undergone significant transformations in China since 2000, changing from urban entrepreneurialism to regionalization. In this context, enclave economy is emerging and developing in various regions, and has been studied by researchers in a range of fields. However, most of the existing studies focus on the microscopic mechanisms and modes, without more detailed analyses of the macroscopic and structural factors behind this phenomenon. Apparently, this approach is problematic because enclave economy is not only a grassroots strategy, but also an integral part of the spatial strategies at the national scale in recent years. Therefore, based on the theories of state spatial restructuring, this article analyzes how enclave economy is produced and what governance structures are formed in this process. It suggests that enclave economy is driven by the crisis of capital accumulation and the tendency of reterritorialization. In this context, it originates from bottom-up institutional experiments, and then becomes a flexible yet inadequate strategy of regionalization. Following this, due to the consistency between enclave economy and the evolution of state spatial selectivity, it is then integrated into China's state spatial strategies that focus on the competitiveness of city-regions. Moreover, the governance structure of enclave economy includes inter-scalar, inter-territorial, and government-market relations, which are contingent, complex, and relatively fragile. In sum, this practice should be viewed as an emerging experiment in the state spatial restructuring, whose effects and consequences remain to be seen.
The relationship between the built environment and urban residents' physical activity is a reflection of the human-environment relationship of urban systems in the field of health, and is related to the development and management of urban public health. In recent years, such relationship has become a new research topic in health geography. Based on the spatial perspective of geography, the progress of research on the influence of urban built environment on residents' physical activity in China and internationally was examined from the three aspects of spatial organization, spatial pattern, and spatial function. The analysis shows that there are many achievements internationally: 1) Social-ecological system research methods are most widely applied and are constantly revised and expanded in theory. Besides, studies based on the theory of mobility and activity behavior are emerging. Some complicated statistical regression models and spatial regression models are gradually applied. 2) In existing studies, the analysis of the influence of a series of characteristics of urban built environment, such as spatial organization, spatial pattern, and spatial function, on the level and type of physical activity of different resident groups has received more attention. Among these, the influence of spatial organization mainly concerns traffic organization, green space network, and other organizational types, as well as the impact of accessibility, connectivity, and other spatial links. The influences of spatial pattern such as structure, form, and spatial function were also examined. However, the research within China is still focusing on introducing international studies and concentrated in a few disciplines such as geography, urban planning, and sports, and lacks theoretical development and case studies in the Chinese context. Therefore, future research should focus on the following: theoretical development based on the ideas of unity of human and nature; application of multi-source data and spatial statistical methods; and new empirical studies based on virtual reality interaction and local context.
Technology transfer is the main route of regional economic development. Cities are the center of the flow of various elements, and interactions and relationships between them is an important content of urban geography research. Therefore, in the era of knowledge economy, the mechanism of technology transfer is particularly important. Consequently, in the perspective of technology transfer and network capital and based on the patent transfer data from the State Intellectual Property Office for 2000-2015, this study explored the main structure, the sub-category model, and the spatial characteristics of the technology transfer network using Gephi, ArcGIS and Stata. The results show that: 1) Although private enterprises and universities are playing an increasingly important role in the technology transfer network in China, most of the connections are established between universities, research institutions, and their derivative enterprises, indicating that the overall connectivity is low and the network spillover effect is weak. 2) According to the patent transfer data of sub-categories, the knowledge required for innovation ability is often generated in relatively few places, and its transfer is mainly concentrated in cities, suggesting that there are some regional barriers to technology transfer between cities in China. 3) In addition, the vast majority of cities are more likely to carry out patent transfer in the same administrative area or between cities with geographical proximity or similar knowledge scale when establishing innovative ties—geographical proximity, technological proximity, and social proximity play a positive role in promoting the development of China's technology transfer network that comprises of enterprises, universities, and research institutions.
Innovation and entrepreneurial activities based on the transformation of Internet economy and information technology have become a focus of attention in today's society. Using the cross-sectional data on the number of Internet start-ups in Shanghai Municipality, this study explored their spatial distribution characteristics and location factors by adopting the methods of nuclear density analysis, Ripley's K function, and negative binomial regression model. The results show that: 1) Internet entrepreneurship has entered an active period since 2010, and the change is consistent with the situation nationwide and the urban industrial orientation in Shanghai. 2) With regard to the spatial distribution, an overall pattern of agglomeration at the macro level and dispersion at the micro level is present. While highly concentrated within the middle ring, enterprises also spread to suburban central towns and new towns. In the central urban areas, agglomeration intensity has continuously increased, and the scale has expanded from 4.5 km to 6.5 km. The spatial distribution changed from relatively balanced to multi-center agglomerations. The five core agglomeration areas, including Huangpu-Jing'an-Xuhui, Wujiaochang, Lujiazui, Zhangjiang, and Caohejing, have won the favor of Internet start-ups depending on their specific resource advantages. 3) Concerning the influencing factors, incubation environment, living environment, business environment, and investment environment constitute the external environment demand of Internet entrepreneurial activities. Industrial agglomeration, technological factors, and land prices have had significant impacts on the spatial distribution of Internet start-ups.
Based on the data of Apple suppliers from 2012 to 2017, this study conducted an empirical analysis of the global value chains of iPhone parts, and the changing role of Chinese enterprises according to the cost value of different parts of mobile phone. The conclusions are as follows: Firstly, suppliers of the key parts were mainly located in the United States, Japan, and South Korea, and they were in the core of value chain governance; while the important and general components were mainly from Japan and Chinese mainland and Taiwan, China. Secondly, the production of most parts was completed in Chinese mainland and Southeast Asia. In recent years, Chinese mainland's status of the "world factory" for general parts of iPhone has been further consolidated, but at the same time, breakthroughs have been made in some important links of the value chains, and Chinese mainland has gradually moved to the high end of the value chain. Thirdly, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Chengdu-Chongqing region, and the Central Plains have become the core production base of iPhone's components. iPhone parts industrial clusters have been formed in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, and they have become the main base for Chinese mainland's enterprises to embed in iPhone's global value chain. The Chengdu-Chongqing region is not only the base for chip companies, but also the location for assemblying and packaging services at the low end of the value chain, which indicates the two-way acceptance at both ends of the value chain. The regions around the Bohai Bay, Fujian Province, Hunan Province, and some other places mainly carry on the production of the medium part of the value chain, while the Central Plains mainly carry on the production of the mobile phone assembly and packaging services. Finally, we analyzed the driving factors that upgraded Chinese mainland's status in the global value chains.
In the era of Internet economy, e-commerce centering on online shopping has boomed, which also promotes the development of the logistics industry. In order to solve the distribution problem of the " last kilometer logistics," parcel collection and delivery points (CDPs) appeared and became a new research object in a multidimensional perspective of geography. Based on the point of interest (POI) data of the Cainiao Station and China Post in 13 municipal districts of Wuhan City, this study used the methods of text analysis, spatial analysis, among others to explore the organization form, location choice, spatial distribution, and agglomeration mode of the CDPs in the city. The conclusions are as follows: 1) Cainiao Station and China Post have very different supporting mechanisms and service targets, and they can play complementary roles despite of their competitive relationship. 2) Most of the Cainiao Station and China Post CDPs are located within 200 meters from the entrances and exits of communities, but those of Cainiao Station are located closer to the communities than China Post. 3) Affected by factors such as urban population distribution, land use type, and purchasing power of residents, the CDPs are unevenly distributed but they extend along the northeast-southwest symmetrical axis, with the density decreasing from the inner to the outer city. 4) The CDPs concentrate in the center of the city, forming a "hot spot area" while disperse in the periphery of the city, forming a "cold spot area," and their agglomeration mode is multiple cores, mainly affected by the aggregation of the Cainiao Station CDPs. 5) The CDPs are distributed on the residential land but their number is still small in the marginal residential areas, and the number is positively related to the size of municipal districts and the number of permanent residents. Finally, based on the above results, this article puts forward some countermeasures as well as the future prospects of research.
With the increasing prosperity of China's economy, it has become an important issue for urban studies and urban development to examine residents' residential choice. Zhongguancun is one of the typical areas in China that have experienced fast economic growth, urban development, and population movement. This study investigated residential mobility intentions of urban residents in relations to their place dependency and community identity with an empirical study of Zhongguanyuan, Kechun, and Zhixi communities in the Zhongguancun area by a questionnaire survey and interviews. Williams scale was employed to investigate and quantify sense of community identity and place dependency especially on education and employment with a total of 292 valid survey questionnaires and 52 in-depth interviews. The results reveal that Zhongguancun residents have high place dependence with regard to children's education and employment, as well as a strong sense of community identity. Among the 292 respondents, 115 have an intention to move, accounting for 39.4% of the total and this proportion rose to 47.2% and 57.6% in the surveyed residents with low dependence on employment and children's education, respectively. Also, most of the residents who have intention to move show a weak community identity. Of the 115 residents who have an intention to move, 97 (84.3%) have no or low sense of belongings to their communities. These results indicate that as the two important factors in residential space, place dependence (including children's education and employment) and community belongings obviously relate to the residential mobility intention and behavior, and therefore have emerged as new driving factors that shape urban space in contemporary China. They should be the focal points for planners and policymakers in urban resource distribution. This study may enrich the research content of living space from the perspective of sense of place, and provide a reference for understanding the characteristics of contemporary urban living space and improving the quality of urban development.
Greenways play an important role in building a continuous ecological open space system in an urban agglomeration. Based on the regional greenways in the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration, topological network analysis and social network analysis were used to assess the connectivity and distribution pattern of ecological recreation space-regional greenway network. The results show that: 1) The α, β, and γ indices are 0, 0.386, and 0.129 respectively, indicating a low-circuitry and low-connectivity topological structure of the network. 2) The network is clustered, and the degree of connectivity of the cohesive subgroups at the edge is higher than that of the central region. 3) The degree of connectivity between the cohesive subgroups in the eastern and northern regions is greater than that of the cohesive subgroups in the western region, and the connectivity between the western subgroups and eastern subgroups is low, suggesting that the network is fragmented in the east-west direction. 4) The distribution pattern of the connectivity is formed under the influences of the greenway development policy and layout, the greenway construction mechanism, the agglomeration pattern of ecological recreation spaces, geographical barriers, and spatial proximity. Several pathways were proposed to construct an ecological recreation space-greenway network with higher connectivity, for providing some references for the planning and development of China's urban agglomerations.
Urban sewage systems in China have been developing rapidly in recent years, with problems of system hydraulic failure in peak period, challenge from change of drainage scenario caused by population change, climate change, and water saving behavior; and urban form is closely related to the operation of urban facilities. This study set up urban morphology scenarios and drainage scenarios, built a top-down virtual model of urban space and sewage system, used Kruscal algorithm for network routing and SWMM software for system simulation, and sampled a large number of sewage system solutions, to explore life cycle cost, structure, and operation of urban sewage systems, and assess urban sewage systems with regard to economic performance, effectiveness, and adaptability. The study found that life cycle cost is about 600-700 million yuan for the city. The velocity failure rate of square, rectangular, and star-shaped cities is 0.55, 0.67, and 0.55 respectively, and the capacity failure rate is 0.35, 0.42, and 0.36. Under the low discharge sewage scenario, velocity failure of the system turns more serious, and capacity failure of the system is improved. Under the high discharge sewage scenario, velocity failure is improved, but capacity failure is more serious. More dispersed sewage systems have better connectedness and the sewage system of rectangular city is more centralized than the square and star-shaped cities. Correlation analysis showed that the more dispersed sewage system is more economical and effective, but the adaptability is worse. Finally, from the perspective of system economy and effectiveness, square and star-shaped cities perform better. With regard to the adaptability of sewage system, rectangular city is superior to square and star-shaped cities. Based on the urban forms of the 86 Chinese urban areas examined in this study, the development trend is unreasonable. It is hoped that the conclusion can provide some reference for future urban planning and urban form management.
With the development of urbanization, the underlying land surface of urban areas also changes. The greatly declined natural landscape and increased number of buildings have significance influence on the urban climate and environment. Urban Climatic Map, a tool and platform for analyzing and evaluating the situation of urban climate, expands the application of urban climate information in urban planning and development. Based on the current situation in southern China for urban climate research, this study examined the difference of environment climate influence level caused by different factors. Combined with the existing compilation method of Urban Climatic Map, Guangzhou City was selected as the study area because of its typical subtropical monsoon climate characteristics. A complex underlying surface urban climatic map system was constructed with multiple environmental factors, assessment periods, and technical methods. Several technical means, including numerical model simulation, remote-sensing inversion, and spatial analysis in GIS, were comprehensively applied to evaluation urban air pollution, thermal load, and ventilation potential in Guangzhou City. We also put forward some preliminary planning recommendations. The results indicate that air pollution and thermal load are characterized by significant differences in seasonal and spatial distribution, while ventilation potential shows a clear difference in space and slight seasonal change. Guangzhou City is subsequently divided into seven zones and a spatial pattern of "superior north and inferior south" is observed. Specifically, the optimum types are mainly distributed in the woodlands and intercity cultivated land in the northern mountainous areas, and the most degraded types are located in the urban core areas of Tianhe, Yuexiu, and Liwan Districts, as well as the industrial areas in Baiyun and Zengcheng Districts. Finally, based on the results of environmental climatic analysis, planning measures of each climatic type are suggested to provide some scientific advices and direction for the sustainable development of Guangzhou City.
