Much global attention has been paid to China's stable and rapid economic growth and urbanization in recent 30 years since the economic reform and opening-up from the end of the 1970s. At present, China is experiencing rapid development and important transition of urbanization. However, under the background of the urbanrural dual system for population registration and social welfare, China's urbanization process is different from the western countries. It is regarded as a local government-oriented urbanization. Local governments' excessive dependence on land finance has led to a continuous rapid expansion of urban built-up areas. Meanwhile, the household registration system and the high living cost in cities hindered farmers to become real urban residents. Urban land expansion and demographic urbanization became increasingly uncoordinated. Understanding the coordination and regional differences of these two processes will be of great significance to China's new urbanization initiative, which promotes healthy, scientific and sustainable urban transition. In this paper, we focus on the widely existing phenomenon that demographic urbanization of rural population lags behind urban land expansion. A coordination model, Theil index and GIS were used to re-examine the process of urban land expansion and population absorption since the early 1990s, investigate the coordination of human-land relationship in the process of urbanization, and analyze the change of non-agricultural population density in the process of urbanization and its regional differences. We hope the conclusion provides certain references for regulating the development of regional urban land and population. The spatio-temporal evolution of the coordination of urban land expansion and demographic urbanization was analyzed based on the data from China City Statistical Yearbooks. By using the Theil index, the change and regional differences of non-agricultural population density of the builtup areas was also discussed. The results indicate that: (1) Dominated by the strong incentives of land finance, the speed of urban expansion of all provinces in China was generally very fast. The disharmony of urban land expansion and population urbanization extended from the eastern part to the rest of the country, which can be considered as a result of similar urban planning methods and urban development patterns; (2) The non-agricultural population density of the built-up areas generally declined due to this disharmony. Differences between and within regions have shown a tendency of convergence over time. The difference within region was the dominant cause of the interprovincial differences. The huge expansion of the urban built-up areas in direct-controlled municipalities and some other economically developed regions reduced the regional difference of the non-agricultural population density after 2004; (3) The development paradigm that local governments confiscates land without fully integrating the landless farmers into the urban welfare system and providing them with sustainable livelihood choices in urban areas must be abandoned. The new urbanization initiative should make urban housing, social security and medical care available for migrant workers. Local governments should treat them as regular urban residents. Reasonable allocation of construction land, that matches the non-agricultural population, is an effective way to achieve healthy and coordinated urbanization in the future. It is imperative for the government to develop strategies toward a coordinated urbanization in China.

Construction of National-level Economic and Technological Development Zones (NETDZs) is one of the most effective governmental policy measures in implementing the nation's regional development strategy and promoting economic development in China. In over 30 years with the widespread establishment of NETDZs in all areas of China, their spatial disparities have increasingly expanded due to various driving mechanism. Understanding and exploring these spatial disparities by Economic Growth Rate (EGR) and their key determinants behind will have a significant importance to understanding the development patterns of ETDZs, making locallytailored strategies and identifying highly efficient development approaches. This paper therefore uses the coefficient of variation and the geographical detector tool to analyze systematically the spatial disparities of NETDZs in China by their EGR in 2010. The result shows that: (1) Overall, EGR of NETDZs in China shows a large difference between eastern, central and western parts of the country with a U-shaped curve, that is, lowest growth rate in central China; (2) Within each region, the spatial disparity of EGR of NETDZs has different characteristics- such disparity is highest in western China followed by eastern China, and is lowest in central China; (3) The national scale factor detection shows that decision forces of the potential determinants vary only slightly. However, significant difference is detected in the analysis for individual regions, which means that the key determinants for the spatial disparities of EGR in NETDZs in the three regions are quite different; (4) Among the 5 key determinants, internal determinants from inside the NETDZs are more dominated in central China and western China while external determinants from host city and regional context are more dominated in eastern China: changes in labor cost, the volume of foreign trade, preferential policy in NETDZs, spatial accessibility of the host city, and industrial support from the host city are the top 5 determinants in the central area of China. Preferential policy change, industrial support from the host city, change in the volume of foreign trade, relative economies scale of NETDZ, and investment level of host city are the top 5 determinants in the western part of China. For NETDZs in eastern China, the top 5 determinants are changes in preferential policy and labor cost, the level of total investment, economic development, and economic growth rate of the host city. (5) The pattern of spatial disparities of EGRs and determinants in NETDZs in three regions in China reflects, to a certain extent, the evolution stage in the life circle of ETDZs development. Based on this, we recommend that in the near future, the development of NETDZs in central China and western China should focus on improving their internal factors such as lowering labor cost, increasing volume of foreign trade and applying more effective preferential policies, while in the long run, external factors, such as spatial accessibility of the host city and industrial support from the host city, will become increasingly important to NETDZ development, meaning that the development of NETDZs will be eventually more dependent on how well they can be integrated into the host city and to a large extent, the urban region.

The purpose of this research is to study the realization of harmonized regional urban-rural development. Firstly, this study defines the concept, interface and properties of urban-rural harmonized system. Secondly, we analyze the main influencing factors of urban-rural development. Then, the research systematically studies the urban-rural harmonized system by the use of catastrophe theory, and employs urban smart growth theory to bring forward the idea of urban-rural harmonized development utilizing land smart use to regulate urban-rural system elements. Harmonized urban-rural development is to coordinate the relationship between a city and the countryside within a regional urban-rural system. A fuzzy interface exists between the city and the countryside because of the socioeconomic development gap and the dual social system structure in urban-rural areas. There is an obvious gap of social and economic development levels between the urban area and the rural area. Therefore, urban-rural system is defined by two subsystems of the city and the villages affected by a fuzzy interface. The fuzzy interface is determined by a series of urban-rural social, economic and environmental factors. The interface of urban-rural harmonized system includes three types: interface between cities and countries, interface between the urban-rural system prior to and after harmonization, and interface between one urban-rural system and the others. The properties of an urban-rural harmonized system include the complexity of the system elements; limited scope of the system; dynamic characteristic of the system and the transformation of overall system. Main factors affecting urban-rural system harmonization are urban-rural reality, farmers' will, and government policy. Urban-rural reality is the basic platform of urban-rural harmonized development. Farmers' will is the bottom-up intrinsic motivation. Government policy is the top-down guiding force. Land is not only the basic means of agricultural production, but also space for urban construction, so land is the bridge and linkage between urban and rural areas. The connotation of urban- rural development is similar to the thinking of smart growth theory. They all realize harmonious development of the resource and environment systems and effective allocation of the economic and production elements. Urban-rural harmonized development focuses on the interaction between urban and rural areas, whereas smart growth theory focuses on the internal flow of elements in inner city. This study proposes three land smart use tools-consolidation of agricultural land; reconstruction of villages and towns; elements' reallocation. The adjustment and optimization in the amount, structure and pattern of urban-rural land use will eliminate the barriers of elements' mobility between urban-rural systems and promote the two-way flow of various elements between urban and rural areas. Land smart use can enhance rural economic vitality, ensure urban economic development, narrow the gap between urban and rural areas, and achieve the urban-rural harmonized development goals characterized by a well-off living, prosperous production, commonly shared welfare, and healthy and beautiful environment.

Since the opening-up and reform from the late 1970s, the economic growth and transformation of urban morphology in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province, China has drawn enormous attention. After over 30 years of rapid development in this region, it is needy to study the developmental processes and underlying mechanisms of the urban morphology evolution. Although the cities in the Pearl River Delta share similar market environment, their resource endowment and governance mode differ from the very beginning of development, resulting in different evolutionary paths of urban morphology. The top-down and bottom-up modes of governance both have been identified in the literature, which have exerted constant influences on urban development. Therefore, a comparative study of urban morphology change under the two governance modes is able to provide insights into the underlying dynamics behind the formation of urban morphology. Through the technical method of remote sensing and GIS, this paper reviews the evolution of urban morphology in six cities in the Pearl River Delta, i.e. Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan and Zhuhai. It depicts the spatialtemporal change of urban morphology at the city scale by combining such factors as economy, politics and planning, and summarizes the process and underlying forces of each city. Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai are categorized under the top-down governance mode, while Foshan, Dongguan and Zhongshan are categorized under the bottom-up governance mode. The result suggests different evolutionary path of urban morphology in each city from 1979 to 2008 owing to specific geographic locations and institutional arrangements. Guangzhou, a city with industrial tradition in heavy industries, has formed a polycentric networked morphology with several big industrial conglomerates and investment of mass transit system. Shenzhen, as a special economic zone in China, has benefited from the investment of large state-owned and foreign companies, and the land use pattern has gone through rapid expansion and then to in-filled adjustment. Zhuhai, another special economic zone in the region, expanded eastward by large projects. Overall, the three cities under the top-down mode underwent relatively concentrated and in-filled land use expansion. On the other hand, Foshan, Dongguan and Zhongshan represent the bottom-up development mode, and their spatial morphologies are generally dispersal and scattered. Foshan and Zhongshan developed loosely in spatial terms in the beginning of the opening- up and reform, through the growth of specialized towns. Foshan, unlike Zhongshan, however, has seen strengthening connections between the clusters in the later phase of development in response to the increasing needs for Guang(zhou) Fo(shan) integration. Dongguan is very typical of the village-based economies, which is driven by overseas Chinese investment. Compared to the urban morphology pattern under the top-down governance mode, the bottom-up mode of urban expansion has given rise to the "road economy" and "village and township economy", which poses great challenges to the agglomeration economy and comprehensive environmental improvement. The importance of this inter-city spatial-temporal comparative study lies in the urgent need to understand the dynamism of urban morphology in contemporary China. By taking a perspective of governance mode, this paper may provide some references for policy makers in spatial restructuring of urban space in the future.

This paper reviews research on urban form, urban structure, and urban morphology of Chinese cities published in major geography, urban planning, and architecture academic journals in the last decade (from 2003 to 2013). By firstly clarifying the working definitions of these three concepts, this paper categorizes current literatures into six major research themes: impacting factors of urban forms, application of new methods and models, time- space dimensions, sustainable urban forms, planning and management of urban forms, and regional case studies. Perspectives, findings, methods, and limitations of the reviewed research were evaluated together with their implementations in planning practices in recent years. By comparing the differences between research approaches in Chinese and English literature, this review shows that Chinese scholars are searching for an "ideal urban form model", which is built on historical studies on reform and reconstruction of urban form and borrowing classic theories from the West, while researchers in the West are currently searching for operational knowledge about a "sustainable urban form" and exploring the development policy and planning approach towards sustainability. Looking into the outcomes of the rapid contemporary urbanization in China, the "ideal urban form model" is problematic due to its ignorance of the smoothness and continuity in spatial change and the unique local cultural context in China, which led to general spatial and social conflicts between the new and old districts and the disappearing of historical and cultural blocks. Therefore, this paper suggests that further efforts should be made on studying local, micro-scale morphological pattern, in order to provide constructive knowledge within a framework that crosses time-space dimensions. Therefore more inclusive and sustainable urban forms could be achieved in the future planning and management practices.

Investigating the relationship between transportation system and urban spatial expansion is an important starting point for revealing interactions between transportation and economic growth. Existing studies in development economics and transportation economics frequently used indicators such as transportation investment and operating mileage of railways and highways to reflect the level of development of traffic infrastructure. These indicators can well demonstrate the investment and construction scale in relation to transportation system as well as well fit the inherent requirement of economic models, yet they are insufficient in reflecting the operation level and efficiency of transportation facilities and their spatio-temporal differentiation. Taking the Wuhan Urban Agglomeration (WUA) as an example, this paper extracted urban land area information and road network in 2000 and 2010 using Landsat imageries through the application of remote sensing and GIS technology. It investigates the spatio-temporal pattern, relationship and driving mechanism of accessibility as well as transport dominance and urban spatial expansion with the application of isochrone overlay and index classification methods. The results indicate that an interdependent and bi-directional relationship exists between transportation system and urban spatial expansion. The transportation system plays an important role in supporting and promoting economic growth and agglomeration of population and industry, which are intrinsically related to spatial expansion of urban land, through direct impacts, external effects as well as multiplier effects. Correspondingly, urban spatial expansion stimulates and ensures the improvements in the quantity and quality of transportation system. Unbalanced distribution of the transportation system is contended to be an important factor causing increased regional economic disparity. The policy implications are that, the government should attach more attention to formulating differentiated transportation development strategies and improving the integrated transportation system in the metropolitan area, which may facilitate accelerated economic growth and reducing regional economic disparities.

Since the reform and opening up, coastal areas of eastern China have experienced very rapid economic development and social change as well as the development of the marine economy, resulting in a close correlation between the marine economy and various social changes. The development of marine economy promotes reorganization of social structures, improvement in quality of life, and advancement of science and technology. The interaction and coupling of the economic system and social system maintain the stability and healthy development of both and results in complex mutual balancing mechanisms. Understanding the relationship between marine economy and social change is an area of study of marine sociology. To make a reasonable correlation analysis, it is necessary to study specific economic and social systems in empirical research and to decompose the large complex systems into simple units. Through the analysis of the interrelations and interactions of these units in the two interrelated systems, a clearer understanding of the status of the overall system can be gained. In this study, by examining the complex interrelations and interaction mechanisms of the marine economy and the different factors associated with social change, we selected relevant indicators and analyzed and quantified the correlation of marine economy and social change in Liaoning Province between 2000-2010 through combined qualitative and quantitative research methods. The quantitative method includes an explanatory structural analysis model and gray relational analysis. The marine economic and social change correlation analysis shows that, among the selected factors affecting social change, marine science and technology contributed significantly to the larger marine economy and played a key role in the development of marine economy and social change; the contribution of social structure and quality of life of the communities to the development of marine economy is relatively small, but marine science and technology, social structure and qualify of life indicators together constitute the main contributing factors of marine economy development and social change. Marine science and technology directly enhance the degree of interdependence of the economic, social and human systems of coastal areas. Marine economy development, on the other hand, continues to influence and improve the social systems and promote the dynamic development of the society. In short, social progress depends on economic growth and development; certain social structures necessarily built on certain economic basis, that is, economic development is the driving force for social change and also a concrete manifestation of social change.

Construction of economic region has become an inevitable trend as a result of the development of the country's multicentered economies, which is also an important support for the strategy of spatial development in each province. The State Council's guidance on speeding up the construction of Central Plains Economic Region (CPER), issued on September 28, 2011, clearly proposed that coordinating urbanization, industrialization and agricultural modernization is the main strategic theme, and optimizing urban system spatial layout and coordinating urban-rural development are the major tasks. Therefore, it is extremely important to integrate urban systems' spatial structures in order to achieve the coordinated development between growth pole and growth plate, center areas and peripheral areas, in CPER. In this paper, based on the theory of regional urban system organization optimization in urban geography, and using the methods of a spatial evaluation model, we did an in-depth analysis on the roadmap of the spatial organization of CPER. The results are as follows. (1) By the evaluation models of the scale strength and comprehensive development strength, the spatial organization levels of the 30 cities in CPER are calculated. Based on the principle of proportionality of spatial distribution and the evaluation results, Zhengzhou is identified as the core city of CPER; Luoyang, Handan, Xinyang and Shangqiu are considered as the regional central cities; Jincheng, Anyang city, Nanyang and Huaibei are the second-level regional central cities; other 21 cites are the local central cities; 201 counties are basic cities for promoting the development of rural areas. (2) Depending on the evaluation models of the spatial organization, such as fractal theory, buffer analysis, circle analysis, urban interaction model, and other quantitative methods, CPER exhibits basic spatial organization characteristics such as poly-center status, spheres radiation, regional group development, network trend. At the same time, the advantages and disadvantages of different urban system spatial organizations in CPER are discussed. (3) Based on the results of spatial organization evaluation models, combined with the basic model of urban spatial combination such as radial growth patterns of mononuclear, multicore balanced and unbalanced growth models, we proposed a spatial integration model for CPER, including one growth pole (Zhengzhou), four circle-layer, five regional cities, four sub-regional cites, five urban coordination region, and seven axis, and suggest that strategies are selected based on specific spatial integration models. From the perspective of best organization models and developmental trend, spatial organization of urban system approaches to promoting healthy development of new urbanization in CPER should be mononuclear unbalanced growth from the center Zhengzhou, sphere extending from Zhengbian metropolitan area to the outer layer, network development of core growth plate of urban agglomeration of Central Plains, five urban partitions including core growth plate, northern coordinated region, western coordinated region, southern coordinated region and eastern coordinated region, following the pattern of "junction cites(dot) + axis (line) + functional partition (side) + network organization". In summary, based on the analyses, we proposed the development methods and roadmaps of the spatial organization, which may predict the future direction of urban system spatial integration in CPER and can also provide support for the coordinated development of new urbanization, new industrialization and new agricultural modernization.

Taking tourism industry as a growth pole to promote the development of the tertiary industry is becoming one of the important strategies for economic growth in urban agglomerations in the future. In the paper, using the gravity model, we measured the connection densities of tourist economies among the 11 cities, established a model for the network structure of the tourist economies in the Jianghuai Urban Agglomeration. The social network software Ucinet 6 was used to demonstrate the spatial positions and the roles of the cities in the network, which then served as a basis for constructing the spatial pattern of the tourist economies in the Jianghuai Urban Agglomeration. The results showed that: the network connections of urban tourist economies in the Jianghuai Urban Agglomeration exhibited an imbalanced pattern, with tight connections in the south and loose connections in the north. Hefei has the highest degree of centrality in all three categories: connectivity, accessibility, and intermediateness, and is also the distribution center for the tourists. So Hefei is the tourism industry center of the Jianghuai Urban Agglomeration.Wuhu and Anqing are the second-level tourist destinations, serving as important visitor centers for the greater Nanjing metropolitan areas and the Sourthern Anhui International Tourism Culture Showcase areas adjacent to the Jianghuai Urban Agglomeration. Ma'anshan, Chuzhou, and Chizhou are tourist destination portals; Chaohu, Tongling are general tourist destinations; Bengbu, Lu'an and Huainan are periphery tourist destinations. During the process of dynamic evolution, network density, number of connecting sides, and connectivity are all showing a growing trend. The intermediary ability and core function of the key cities are reducing. Most cities are showing route-dependent accumulation cycles. The level of spatial balance among the cities is improving. Based on the structural characteristics of tourist economy network, together with the location factors such as regional transportation layout, tourism resources distribution and urban economic strength, we divided the 11 cities into different levels as tourist destinations. We also proposed the concepts of spatial development axis and spatial development pattern which indicate the coordinated development with the key tourism areas nearby, namely, "three first-level tourist axes, two secondary-level tourist axes, and one potential tourist axis". The tourist economies of the Jianghuai Urban Agglomeration should be connected with one another as well as those of the cities outside the urban agglomeration. This paper aimed to understand the macroscopical regional integral structure, and offer certain theoretical references for the balanced development of regional tourism and the tourism marketing.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asia has been confronted with serious social and economic conflicts, and in urban areas, these problems are more obvious and severe. However,the 21st century is very significant to Central Asia, especially to Kazakhstan. Oil industry has promoted the rapid economic growth and lots of new oil cities have emerged in this region, but the traditional industrial cities are still struggling. The aim of this research is to analyze the degree of Central Asia's urbanization and the evolutional process from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and establish a comprehensive evaluation index system based on the case of Kazakhstan's urbanization. Through studying the essential meanings of urbanization and the characteristics of Kazakhstan, this research set up a comprehensive evaluation index system, including changes in population, economy, society and land, and othersixteen specific secondaryindicators. Moreover, using the method of information entropy to determine the weight of each indicator and calculate its comprehensive value. Firstly, the results show that the weight of social class index is the highest, andthe weight of population class index is the lowest,whichindicates that the rural-urban migration is not the main urbanization process of Kazakhstan during the past 20 years. Secondly, the comprehensive values suggest that Kazakhstan's comprehensive urbanization process can be divided into four stages, and the studies on the evolution process found that the mechanisms of population, economy, society and land present different characteristics during the four stages of urbanization. (1) In the rapid reduction stage (1992-1996), the main processes of Kazakhstan's urbanization were the rapid decline of the four aspects, especially the society index class. (2) In the slow declining stage (1997-2000), the main processes of Kazakhstan's urbanization were the rising of population index and slow declining of other aspects. (3) In the slow rising stage (2001-2004), Kazakhstan's urbanization was mainly the gradual recovery of economy and society indexes; (4) In the rapid rising stage (2005-2011), Kazakhstan's urbanization mainly witnessed a rapid economic growth. Finally, this research studied the influencing factors of Kazakhstan's urbanization based on the method of Four Dimensional Analysis on market forces, intrinsic forces, exterior forces and administrative forces. (1) The political mutation under the destruction of the urban functions was the reason for the decline of the Kazakhstan's urbanization level from 1992 to 2000. (2)A large number of urban residents with higher vocational skills and more knowledge had escaped from Kazakhstan, leading to the collapse of the urban population, and this phenomenon was even more significant from 1992 to 1996. (3) The recovery of Kazakhstan's urbanization was due to the administration power and policy implications, and these were also the reasons for the slow decline of Kazakhstan's urbanization from 1997 to 2000 and the strengthening of Kazakhstan's urbanization after 2000. (4) Driven by the oil industry and trades, Kazakhstan's urbanization improved in terms of its industrial structure and employment.

Today, tourism and urban development, both promoting and affecting the urban economic and social development, have become the two focuses of the economic social development studies. At the same time, there is an obvious relationship between tourism and urban development. Beijing is one of the most representative city of tourism and urban development. This paper, taking the capital Beijing as a case, and drawing on the coupling theory in physics, constructs evaluation index system of tourism and urban development. The results show that: (1) Both the level of tourism and urban development in Beijing have increased greatly from 1995 to 2011, and there is a coordinative relationship between them. (2) The coordinative degree is increasing continuously, progresses gradually from imbalance stage to high coordination stage from 1995 to 2011. The period from 1995 to 1997 was the imbalance stage, the period from 1998 to 2004 was the coordination stage, and the period from 2007 to 2011 was the high coordination stage. According to types of the coordinative degree, it was urban development lagged behind before 2001 and was tourism lagged behind after 2001. Particularly, although the general trend of tourism development is positive, there still are some great fluctuations in the year of 2003 and 2008, caused by SARS, Beijing Olympic Games and international financial crisis, suggesting that some accidental events, with direct or indirect effects on the tourism industry, are inevitable during the process of tourism industry development. The coordinative relationship between tourism and urban development linked with urban scale, geographic location, economic development, national policy, etc. The mechanism needs more in-depth studies in the future. In order to make tourism and urban development more coordinative, three advices are given in this paper, including improving infrastructure construction, promoting the development of suburban tourism and urban redevelopment, and exerting the effect of tourism industry chain. Besides, in this paper we just discuss the relationship between the tourism and urban development through macro perspective. In the meantime, tourism has become one of the driving forces of new urbanization, and a number of new tourist cities are emarging along the water and land transportation arteries. In addition, a lot of historical urban districts have been revitalized and have become tourism business districts. The researches that explore how the tourism industry affects urbanization in the cities at different levels with the progress of social economies, from a microcosmic perspective, need to be strengthened in the future.

Urbanization has great potential to stimulate China's domestic demand and is an important driving force of building a well-off society in an all-round way. However the limited land resource in the process of urbanization has caught great attention of the government. So, research on the mechanisms of urban land expansion can offer effective guidance for urbanization. Multi-agent modeling provides a new method to study urban land expansion. And it is of theoretical and practical significance to adopt multi-agent modeling, a bottom-up approach, to explore the characteristics and mechanisms of urban land expansion. However, the existing multi-agent models are mainly based on raster, where grid size has a major impact on the simulation results, and grid size, neighborhood shape and neighborhood size also lead to different simulation results. As a result, it is a big challenge to choose an appropriate size for better simulation results. In order to overcome the limitation of the traditional raster-based multi-agent simulation, a vector-based multi-agent system of urban land expansion dynamic simulation was developed, in which household agents selected their own optimal places of living based on evaluation indices of urban residential suitability in the human-environment science. The evaluation indices mainly include the following four aspects: traffic accessibility, living convenience, land price and landscaping. The indices of traffic accessibility are obtained by calculating the distance from road and subway station based on exponential distance decay function. The indices of living convenience are obtained by calculating the distance from the public facilities such as school, hospital and so on, based on the same function. The indices of land price depend on the average price of the land in the neighborhood. The indices of landscaping are obtained based on the distance to rivers or the green in the same way. Finally, the four indices are summed up, by a weighted factor, to indicate the living suitability. The model runs as follows: household agents select their ideal residential package to live based on their preferences of living environment, the four evaluation indices as mentioned above. The land type of this package will be converted to urban land when the total number of household agents that select this package exceeds a certain threshold. At this point household agents can choose to stop selecting and settle down, or continue to select until they find their ideal residential package. This vector-based model was used to simulate urban land expansion process from 2003 to 2008, taking the district of Panyu of Guangzhou City as a study area and using the GIS-Extension module of NetLogo platform. Eventually, the simulation results were compared to the actual land use situations, showing that the conversion accuracy is 63.09%, the non-conversion accuracy is 90.74%, and the total accuracy is 86.04%. The simulation shows that vector-based multi-agent simulation of urban land expansion not only can eliminate the impact of the scale on the simulation results, but also has high simulation accuracy. At the same time, to some extent the vector-based multi-agent simulation is useful for understanding and discussing the mechanisms of urban expansion, and offers effective support for making the decisions on the construction of new urbanization.

Chinese real estate industry has been developing very quickly, but imbalanced, since the start of real estate reform three decades ago. Most of the investments have been focusing on the regions with well-developed urban economies, attractive economic environment, better infrastructures and public services, and better living conditions, which gradually lead to bigger and bigger spatial differences in real estate development among the different regions. Rational real estate development can provide people with moderate housing condition, but irrational and imbalanced development will hinder the efforts to improve housing condition. It is important to explore the relationship between real estate development and housing condition. In this paper, we first established a number of comprehensive assessment indicators for real estate development and housing condition, and then calculated the degree of coordination and coupling development between real estate development and housing condition improvement. The spatial pattern of the degrees of coordination and development of the 286 prefectural cities showed that: (1) Coordination degree between real estate development and housing condition in most prefectural cities is at medium level, with an average number of 0.59, indicating that the two subsystems are still in an adjustment phase and have not yet established a coordinated and mutually reinforcing dynamic relationship. (2) Coupling development degree between two subsystems in most prefectural cities is still at a lower level. There are significant disparities between eastern coastal areas and western inland areas. Based on degrees of coordination and coupling development, the 286 prefectural cities can be divided into nine categories, namely, well developed and coordinated area, well developed and adjusting area, well developed but conflicting area, developed and coordinated area, developed and adjusting area, developed but conflicting area, under developed but coordinated area, under developed and adjusting area, under developed and conflicting area. (3) One of the key tasks for the economy in 2013 is to actively and steadily promote urbanization, strive to improve the quality of urbanization, and firmly adhere to the real estate control policies. These seemingly contradictory and complex tasks should be undertaken with prudence and flexibility as well as positive and moderate attitude. Considering the significant disparities among the different regions in China, the government can take the measures that suit the local conditions, such as different financial policies, price guidelines and administrative decisions. The central and local governments should play different functions but work together and establish an effective information-sharing mechanism. In other words, to make joint efforts to achieve coordination between the real estate development and housing condition improvement, the central government should formulate the policies, determine the objectives, and monitor the results; local governments should have the right to choose the suitable means and ways to achieve specific goals, and accept supervisions from the higher level government and respond to the attentions from the public for evaluation of the policies and fulfillment of the obligations.

Traditional theories of urban development have been outmoded in the era of globalization and knowledge economy, and urban amenities are now considered as a more and more important factor promoting urban growth. Urban amenities have become an increasingly hot topic in the western countries, to which the researchers in China seem to have not paid too much attention. This article aims at obtaining a comprehensive understanding of overseas research in the field of urban amenities, in order to provide references for urban amenity research in China. By collecting and analyzing related publications, this paper gives a systematically review of overseas research on urban amenities from several aspects: (1) the theoretical basis, including human demand theory, capital theory and sciences of human settlement; (2) concepts of urban amenities defined by different researches, and three types of urban amenities, i.e. natural amenities, modern amenities and social amenities; (3) urban amenities and amenity migration; (4) the influence of urban amenities on location decisions of talents, companies and urban growth; (5) commonly used research methods of urban amenities including survey, Hedonic price model and structure equation model. After that, the author makes comments on the current research progress and research trends. At the same time, comparisons between domestic and foreign researches on urban amenities are also discussed. The main conclusions from the review are as follows. (1) Quite a few of Western scholars have demonstrated that urban amenities work as an promoter to urban development through attracting talents and companies, whereas the concept of urban amenity has been studied just as a component of the livability of a city, which has not been closely related to urban development; (2) the focus of the scholars on urban amenities has changed from natural factors previously to modern elements now, such as restaurants, museums and bars, because a city, after all, is man-made; (3) the theory of urban amenities is more concerned with the needs of talent and the creative class, so it is a demand oriented developmental theory, which can not only help make a city successful in economic growth but also facilitate continuous urban development. With the influence of globalization, there is a strong necessity of carrying out studies on urban amenities in China from the three aspects: (1) it has been widely proved that urban amenities have a strong relation with urban growth, and China will lose more profit if we ignore it, especially for super cities as Beijing and Shanghai. With the rapid progress of urbanization and economic development in China, more people come to urban areas, so it is of great significance to take urban amenities into consideration in the process of making developmental strategies; (2) urban planning system can also benefit from urban amenity studies, since it is concerning people's needs; (3) the Twelfth Five-year Plan of China has proposed to speed up economic restructuring from traditional industries to high-tech industries. Considering that the developmental theory of urban amenities lies in attracting human capital and technical enterprises, it may very well provide guidance for the economic restructuring of the cities in China. Above all, from the perspective of both perfecting related research and promoting urban growth, the research of urban amenities in China is needed.

Urban function has always been one of the hot-spot subjects having attracted the attention of domestic and overseas geographical circles. China has mainly followed the steps of western countries in researching the issue of urban function, but has seldom made original explorations. In addition, China's researches on urban function are unnecessarily confined to the classification of the functions and lack overall measurement of regional urban function systems and their complementation. In recent years, along with the emergence of integrated regions, the research on the urban functions of the regions with high integration degree such as the Yangtze River Delta has become a hot topic. With the Yangtze River Delta as research object, 139 districts and counties in the region as basic spatial units, based on the 10% sampling survey data among the national census data in 2000 and 2010, this paper has extracted the information on industrial workforce population divided by "industrial type" of each district and county, consolidated and reduced them into seven functional types, and analyzed the internal functional division and spatial clustering characteristics of the Yangtze River Delta from two lateral layers, namely, structure attribute and space attribute. This paper first measured the scale differentiation and spatial clustering degree of each function in the region by means of Lorenz curve and Ellison-Glaeser index(EG), and then analyzed the spatial clustering of functions in each district and county with functional location entropy as basic data, and surveyed the spatial distribution and change of each function clustering district. The research shows that, as seen at national level, in the Yangtze River Delta, "commerce and trade" and "industry" are generally the main functions, showing the trend of being further strengthened, while agricultural function is being weakened continuously. The internal functional division structure in the Yangtze River Delta shows the trend of constant professionalization, and professionalized service functions like "commerce and trade", "modern logistics", and "education and scientific research", etc., are gradually centralized in the core areas of three central cities, Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou, while the districts clustered with "industry" function are distributed in Shanghai-Nanjing axle areas, and are gradually transferred and spread to the areas along the Yangtze River and the coastal areas of Hangzhou Bay. Along with the deepening of regional integration development, the functions born by individual units in the Yangtze River Delta are being gradually transformed in professionalized direction, and also, the same functions have gradually clustered in similar spatial location, forming a spatial clustering district featured by some professional function. The professional service functions such as regional business, commerce and trade, logistics, education, and scientific research, etc., will be increasingly centralized in central cities, and it's easy to form a manufacturing clustering district in the areas close to central cities. Generally speaking, the areas having stronger relationship with central city Shanghai in the Yangtze River Delta have higher degree of functional professionalization. With the scales of workforces in different industries, as shown in the previous two census of population, as preliminary data, this paper can approximately reflect the pattern of functional division in internal regions of the Yangtze River Delta, but meanwhile, it has certain deficiencies. For example, it neglects the differences among labor-intensive and technique- and capital-intensive industries in terms of employment rate and labor productivity, etc. These deficiencies need to be corrected in the future research by subdividing industrial categories, introducing economic data, and so on.

Abstract:Studies showed that ecosystem services are closely related to land utilization. Human activities have been relentlessly developing and using the land, causing serious exhaustion of land resources and making ecological environment change from bad to worse, which in turn poses severe threat to the sustainable utilization of ecosystem services. For sustainable land use and human well-being promotion, it is important to integrate ecosystem service into the land use decision-making process. Creating partitions based on different ecosystem services is of great significance for land use and management of ecosystem services. Taking Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei as a case area, the study in this report assessed the ecosystem service value of each unit based on IGBP land use data from 2001 to 2009. Regionalization of ecosystem service was created by SOFM Neural Network. In order to recognize the main ecosystem services of each region, the study calculated the hot spots of ecosystem service by ArcGIS. Combined with national major function oriented zoning, the study put forward proposals for making the policies on the future land development. The results indicated that Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Area can be divided into four regions based on ecosystem service values: Ⅰ. Bashang Plateau and northwest Hebei mountain region, Ⅱ. Yanshan and Taihang Mountains region, Ⅲ. Central and southern Hebei Plain region, and Ⅳ. Bohai Sea coastal area. The ecosystem service value of Bohai Sea coastal area continued to rise while that of the other areas decreased to different degrees: Ⅱ＞Ⅰ＞Ⅲ. Wind and spring floods eroded soils in region Ⅰ and the soil are quite fragile. In order to conserve water and soil, proper land-use policies should be made for region Ⅰ. The key restoration measures include improvement of rangeland management, financial incentives to elimination of overstocking, and re-vegetation with appropriate rest periods during which grazing should be banned. Most of the hot spots of biodiversity service are distributed in region Ⅱ, but the value goes down with each passing year. Therefore, policy makers should pay more attention to biodiversity conversation in this region. As part of rapid urbanization efforts, the type of ecosystem service in region Ⅲ is quite simple. Food production is the dominant service while other services are quite low especially for water conservation and soil formation. On the premise of guaranteeing food production, proper policies should be made to adjust the proportion of urban land use to increase other ecosystem service such as carbon sink and pollination services. The resources of beach soils of region Ⅳ are rich, but the utilization ratio is low because of serious soil salinization. It is urgent for decision makers to provide guidance for salinization control, such as promoting water saving agricultural techniques and reducing artificial recharge of groundwater, to limit the increase of salinity. In addition, region Ⅳ should make full use of wetland because wetland can provide many services such as water conservation. The results indicated that SOFM Neural Network has strong advantage in objectivity and clear classification and is of great importance as a supplement to ecosystem service regionalization. The dividing method of GIS and SOFM clustering can identify regional differences and similarities of ecosystem services value and works well on ecosystem services regionalization.

Taking three residential areas of different income levels in Kaifeng City, Henan Province in 2009 as a case, this study analyzes the ecological footprint of Kaifeng City using the theory and methods of ecological footprint and questionnaire survey. Based on the survey in the three residential areas, Banqiao, Kangping and Longchengxiangxieli Garden, the ecological footprint of consumption of biological resources and energy are calculated. The results indicate that, firstly, in the three residential areas, from the viewpoint of per capita ecological footprint, energy consumption in the overall ecological footprint is at a higher level; secondly, from the viewpoint of biological consumption, per capita ecological footprint of pork is the largest, followed by dairy products, and the reason is that meat and dairy food production requires more land area; thirdly, from the viewpoint of different types of per capita ecological footprints, in Banqiao residential area the percentage of fossil fuel land and building land is the largest, followed by arable land and grassland. Based on the analysis above, we conclude that the higher the residential area's living standard is, the greater the ecological footprint is, and vice versa. This study demonstrates that Kaifeng city's polarization phenomenon is the main reason for the unfairness between the two residential areas in terms of ecological footprints and carbon emissions. Finally, we provide some advices to the urban households and policymakers, such as promoting economic development, actively creating more jobs, and leading the residents to rational consumptions.

Island is a special regional unit with unique development models and paths. Islands, with their unique locations, resources and environmental advantages, play an important role in the modernization process. Besides being the frontier of the defense of national sovereignty and security, the islands are the important basis to strengthen the marine economy and expand the development space of China. As an important transitional region connecting the continents and oceans, islands often have important traffic advantage of port and waterway. Islands are also an important platform to protect marine environment and maintain marine ecosystems. In recent years, with more emphasis being put on marine territories world wide, researches on islands also increased among the scholars at home and abroad. In this paper, we started with analyzing the meaning of island economy. On the basis of others' accomplishments, we tried to define what island economy is. Based on extensive literature study, we conducted a systematic analysis on island economy from the four aspects as follows: its development, evolution and transformation, its development model, the coordination and optimization of man-land relationship in the development process, and its impact on resource and environment. Foreign scholars focused on sustainable economic development of an island as well as the development of various industries in island economy, and they had a series of research achievements especially on island tourism development. Domestic scholars focused on island fisheries, tourism and other industries, and carried out active research on overall economic development of an island, its economic evolution, economic development model, spatial differentiation, and so on. However, as shown in the literature published so far, in this research field there is still lac of systematic studies, research teams and achievements, especially on the formation, evolution mechanism, the elements of island economy and the mechanism of their interactions. The studies on the resources and environmental effects of island economy were mainly combined with the sustainable development of island economy, and most of the studies on this topic mainly focused on the impact of island economy (especially the tourism) on resources and environment and how to protect them in order to maintain the sustainable development of regional economy. Finally, we suggested furture direction of the research on island economy: (1) Launch systematic studies on island economy by using the Man-land Relationship Areal Theory as a guide, combined with system science theories, regional economic development theories and industrial structure evolution theories. (2) Conduct quantitative analysis based on the studies on the bearing capacity of resources and environment; (3) Pay attention to the support of 3S technology and use participatory investigation method in order to obtain more intuitive and reliable data. (4) Conduct comprehensive studies on the development and sustainability of island economy to serve practice.