This paper provides a review on the progress of world city research in the past 30 years. It attempts to argue that, in the 21st century, the focus of world city literature has shifted from proving the links between economic globalization and urban restructuring to revealing different pathways in world city formation. Two debates took place around 2000 have become turning points in the academic trajectory: (1) debate on world city types and driving forces led by Hill and Kim; (2) debate on world city history led by Abu-Lughod. This paper is organized into three sections. First, it briefly reviews the classical theories alongside with some early criticisms. In the 1980s, the world city theories founded by Friedmann and Sassen have caused a paradigm shift in urban studies. Cities have been seen as basing points of the new international division of labor. Although the classical theories are still the foundation of current research, scholars have criticized them for overemphasizing the economic factors, exaggerating the generality of New York model and neglecting historical analysis. Because of lacking solid empirical bases, these early criticisms have not challenged the classical theories radically. Secondly, it introduces the two debates and two following trends in detail. Based on the study of Tokyo and Seoul, Hill and Kim have led the first debate. As the important role of developmental state, they designated the two Asian cities as state-centred global cities, which were in sharp contrast to the market-certred ones, such as New York and London. Friedmann and Sassen have responds to their arguments and admitted that, the classical theories neglected the role of state. The second debate is about history of world cities. Through investigating the evolution of three American cities in a long-term, Abu-Lughod has explored their unique responses, called "personality", to globalization. Her historical-comparative method has opened up an important new theoretical perspective and aroused interest on historical analysis. As a result of the two debates, the discussions in this field have already been moved forward. Researches on "world city politics" and "world city history" have become two major trends in this new century. Finally, based on the reviews, it states some inspirations for world city research in China. With the rising of China, Chinese cities will play more important roles in the world. The research should not just follow the classical theories, but reveal the nature of Chinese modes, which will help to find the right way and enrich the world city theories.

National High-Speed Rail Grid (4+4) Passenger Dedicated Lines (PDL) Railway Planning, covering all provincial capital cities and more than 90% cities with populations of more than 500,000, will be up and running in 2015. Accessibility by high speed railway network has become a hot topic in the accessibility research field. In this paper, based on review of the methods used by other researchers, the shortest time distance matrix between provincial capital cities was chosen to analyze inter-provincial accessibility by conventional railway network and by high-speed railway network, and weighted average travel time was used to analyze inter-provincial accessibility and spatial pattern in the high-speed railway time. Results are shown as fellows: (1) Inter-provincial accessibility by conventional railway network obtained with shortest time distance (including transfer and short-stay) has a "center-periphery" spatial pattern, with Zhengzhou-Wuhan as the center and other provinces as peripheries. The accessibility decreases from center to peripheries in circular gradients. The dominant factors affecting the accessibility are network pattern, node location and train organization, as Beijing has higher accessibility with radial rail network. (2) Inter-provincial accessibility by high-speed railway network also has a "center-periphery" pattern, whileWuhan is more convenient than Zhengzhou. Passenger Dedicated Lines have shortened inter- provincial travel time and doubled the 2% areas of best accessibility (from 5.3×10⁴ km² to 10.8×10⁴ km²), showing the effects of high-speed railway network. The average travel distance of each capital city is 60,000 kilometers by both conventional network and high-speed railway network, but the latter only costs half of total travel time as the former, while the area of the best accessibility is 108,000 square kilometers. (3) High-speed railway network will equalize inter-province accessibility, as standard deviation of accessibility coefficient is less than conventional railway network. Remote regions such as Yunnan and Fujian had the biggest improvement in accessibility while the center provinces had littles change.

As one of the characteristics of China as a socialist country, the Five-Year Plan/Planning (FYP) is very important for regulating economic development even in post-reform China. Currently FYP is officially known as five-year economic and social development planning, which evolved from socialist economic planning during pre-reform period. As defined by the State Council, FYP is not a single document but rather a system that includes a master plan (the outline), sector plans and regional plans across the national, provincial and city or county levels. The role of this planning system has changed significantly since the first FYP was launched in 1953. The market-oriented reform and decentralized economic administration has changed China's political economy and necessitated the transformation of FYP mechanisms in economic and spatial governance. Based on the relevant government documents of the first FYP and the current status of spatial development of China, this paper first analyzes the changes of spatial planning in the FYP system and the underlying mechanisms over the past sixty years, and it indicates that spatial planning has become more and more sophisticated and systematic since the first FYP. In the beginning, there were few spatial planning elements in the FYP during the period of planned economy; spatial development was only a passive result of site selection of the projects of different industries and sectors. During a certain period of time after the reform, spatial planning emerged in the form of designating certain regions for special policies and guiding the use of space. After the 11th FYP, more strongly, spatial planning took the form of not only guiding but also restricting the use of space. This paper then analyzes the mechanisms underlying the evolution of spatial planning through an analytical framework, including three aspects such as the relationship between the government and market stakeholders, the relationship between the central government and local authorities, and feedback of spatial development status to planning. Basically, the mixed economy and decentralized planning administration generated new stakeholders and marginalized the role of FYP in spatial development in post-reform period. The FYP has changed from economic planning to spatial policy zone setting to guide economic and social development in its evolution process. However, in the 1990s, FYP failed in regional governance to tackle the disordered spatial development. Recently, facing the declining of the role of FYP in the mechanism of spatial governance, the central government attempted to incorporate and conceptualize spatial planning in FYP as a governance instrument in spatial development. The initiative took three approaches to reinforce the position of spatial planning in the FYP system, including major function-oriented zone plan, regional plans and planning institutional reform at municipal or county levels, which were articulated in 11th FYP discourse at different geographic scales. The innovative spatial governance approach provides opportunities to cope with the uncoordinated and unbalanced regional development by spatial regulations and guiding practices. In addition, the approach is institutionally articulated in the political economy of China through the top-down planning system. With the spatial and economic strategies closely combined, the new spatial planning approach is deemed as an important instrument to cope with the current dilemmas of regional governance in China. Lastly, the paper points out that the emerging spatial planning approach is facing the challenges from the pro-growth strategies of local governments and the big picture of fragmented planning in China and will not operate smoothly in the near future.

Internal spatial characteristics of commerce in a city are always one of the research focuses in commercial geography. Based on data from the first and second nation-wide economic census in China, we studied the spatial distribution and clustering of commercial networks in Beijing in 2004 and 2008. The data were divided into three parts: wholesale and retail, accommodation and catering industry, and residential services and other services. Commercial networks data included business name, address, industry classification, business type, income, staff, location code, and so on. Linking location code to business allowed us to obtain the spatial information of commercial networks, which is a basic approach of point pattern analysis in GIS. Based on the spatial characteristics of the commercial networks in Beijing, we chose kernel density, standard deviational ellipse and Ripley's K(r) function as the research methods and take 8 districts in Beijing as study areas. As widely used point pattern analysis approach for single scale, kernel density and standard deviational ellipse can show the distribution characteristics of commercial networks from microscopic and macroscopic view respectively. Furthermore, Ripley's K(r) function is a point pattern analysis method based on distance, which is often used to describe multi-scale of spatial clustering phenomenon. Compared to 2004, distribution and clustering of the commercial networks have changed significantly in 2008. The findings are as follows. (1) The commercial network of Beijing presents concentrated distribution, and forms obvious concentration area and centrality. The concentration center of commercial network is mainly located within the fifth beltway of the city, and the location of concentration center has changed between 2004 and 2008. Moreover, there are significant differences in the spatial bias among the commercial networks in Beijing. (2) Typical business areas are mainly distributed in the concentration areas of the commercial networks. In the result of kernel density, a highly concentrated area is distributed mainly around a typical business area. Examples of typical business areas with great influences on the distribution of commercial networks include CBD, Financial Street, Wangfujing Street, Zhongguancun, Olympic Village and Asian Games Village. (3) Choosing Tian'anmen Square as the center point, the patterns of spatial clustering of wholesale and retail industry and accommodation and catering industry are similar, showing increase first and then decrease. Greatly influenced by the residential areas, residential services and other service industries have changed dramatically between the two censuses. For Ripley's K(r) function value in 2008, the concentration of resident services and other services industries has a lower peak value than that in 2004, reflecting the diffusion for the networks of resident services and other services industries alongside with relocation of the residents from the city center to outer areas.

Many resource-dependent cities in China are stepping into predicament nowadays, when their resources have been depleted. The severe imbalance of industrial function is one of the main reasons that make sustainable development beyond reach of resource-exhausted cities. Mainly based on statistic data, this paper analyzes the characteristics of main industrial sectors, dominant industrial function, industrial specialization and its extent in 24 prefecture-level resource-exhausted cities confirmed by the National Development and Reform Commission. The 24 case cities are classified, and the dynamic changes of industrial function from 1997 to 2011 in those cities are discussed by using basic economic theory, industry life circle theory and methods of city function analysis. The conclusion shows that, due to industrial specialization, in general in resource-exhausted cities percentage of the work forces in the primary industry is slightly higher than national average. As a result, resource-exhausted cities largely exemplify fundamental industrial function and have more work forces in the fields like mining, electricity, gas and water supply, which are closely related to mining industry. Resource-exhausted cities play an important functional role in mining industry and other related industries. However, in most service areas like transportation, storage, postal service, these cities have low percentage of work forces, much lower than national average, which reflects the functional defect of resource-exhausted cities. Moreover, resource-exhausted cities mainly rely on resource-related heavy manufacturing industry as well as mining industry, with the percentage of work forces engaged in manufacturing still under the national average. About half of the case cities have redefined manufacturing instead of mining as their dominant industrial function. However, in the case cities, only mining industry reaches specialization standard, though situations differ from city to city. Based on the current industrial function characteristics, the 24 case cities can be classified into four major categories. Most of the case cities kept improving their mining function in the years between 1997 and 2011. Meanwhile there is also a clear trend of industrial function diversification.

City's cultural and creative industry has increasingly become an important industry in the national economy and a pillar sector of the tertiary industry. The strategic decision of developing cultural and creative industry and building up the cultural power has been stressed by the central government of China. The studies on this topic therefore are helpful for understanding the transformation of urban industries and the sustainable development. Based on the discussion of the concept of cultural and creative industry, using the methods such as field investigation, comparative analysis and on-site interview in the districts of the industry, this paper describes the current status and characteristics of the development of the cultural and creative industry, and analyzes the issues. Furthermore, this paper displays the characteristics and patterns of spatial distribution of city's cultural and creative industry in China at the national and urban levels. The results have shown that city's cultural and creative industry has been developing rapidly and continuously in China, and it has already become a pillar industry in several big cities and a new driving force of industrial transition and economic development. Up to now, six clusters of city's cultural and creative industry have been formed in China, including the Capital area, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Chuan-Shaan Area, Central Area and Yunnan Area. City's cultural and creative industry in China exhibits four types of spatial distribution patterns, including central city areas, peripheral areas around the city, areas adjacent to high-tech parks and the areas in outer suburb counties. In the future, city's cultural and creative industry in China needs to be further developed in order to become a pillar industry of urban economic development. This paper suggests that talent training for developing the industry should serve as a primarily intellectual support. In addition, construction of the industrial clusters is important for enhancing the spatial development of the industry in clustering pattern. The government should make favorable policies and set up funds for the development of the industry. The paper also suggests that there is a need to establish an alliance among the cities internationally and make favorable policies to accelerate the international development of city's cultural and creative industry.