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    Urban Geography & Regional Development
  • Urban Geography & Regional Development
    Two debates and two trends：Review on world city research
    XUE Desheng, HUANG Hemian
    2013, 32(8): 1177-1186. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.001
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    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.
  • Urban Geography & Regional Development
    Effects of high speed railway network on the inter-provincial accessibilities in China
    FENG Changchun, FENG Xuebing, LIU Sijun
    2013, 32(8): 1187-1194. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.002
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    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.
  • Urban Geography & Regional Development
    Evolution of spatial planning in the Five-Year Plan/Planning system of China
    WANG Lei, SHEN Jianfa
    2013, 32(8): 1195-1206. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.003
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    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.
  • Urban Geography & Regional Development
    Spatial distribution and clustering of commercial network in Beijing during 2004-2008
    ZHANG Xun, ZHONG Ershun, ZHANG Xiaohu, WANG Shaohua
    2013, 32(8): 1207-1215. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.004
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    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.
  • Urban Geography & Regional Development
    Characteristics of resource-exhausted cities’industrial function in China
    CAO Jing, ZHANG Wenzhong
    2013, 32(8): 1216-1226. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.005
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    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.
  • Urban Geography & Regional Development
    City’s cultural and creative industry in China：Status,distribution,and development strategy
    ZHANG Qiang
    2013, 32(8): 1227-1236. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.006
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    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.
    • Agricultural Geography
  • Agricultural Geography
    Geographical agglomeration of crops and its evolutionary mechanism in Henan Province during 1989-2009
    CHEN Taizheng, LI Erling, LI Wan
    2013, 32(8): 1237-1245. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.007
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    Taking 17 types of crops in Henan Province as an example, this paper analyses the geographical agglomeration and specialized level of crops from 1989 to 2009. Based on evolutionary economic geography, an analytic framework of "Stability-Variation-Selection-Adaption" was established to explain the crops' spatial agglomeration and its evolutionary mechanism. The results indicate that agglomeration of crops is low and in slow growth, especially for the general crops; rice has the highest level of clustering, which has a great impact on the whole agglomeration level of crops. Levels of agglomeration and specialization of the economic crops are higher than the food crops, and their distribution patterns are relatively stable, still concentrated in the initially favorable areas. Specialized level of vegetable crops is low, and their spatial distributions are dependent on the urbanization level of each city. Fruit crops constantly concentrate in the western mountainous area of Henan Province, especially Sanmenxia City, and some fruit crops, such as grapes and peaches, appear to be in a decentralized trend. The municipal differentiation degree of crops is low, and the pattern of division and specialization has just emerged.
  • Agricultural Geography
    Simulation of the changes of farmer households’land-use behaviors in response to China’s Grain to Green policy: A case study in Gaoqu Commune of Mizhi County, Shaanxi Province
    CHEN Hai, XI Jing, LIANG Xiaoying, CHEN Shanshan
    2013, 32(8): 1246-1256. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.008
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    Analyzing the interactions between environmental policies and farmers' responses is an important dimension to understand the sustainability of agro-ecosystems. China's Grain to Green (GTG) policy has been the most influential one that has drawn the biggest participation from the farmers in the contemporary history of China. To what extent the implementation of the GTG policy has affected regional land-use changes and farmers' land-use behaviors at the household level in particular, has been a critical issue that concerned by both policy makers and researchers. This empirical study identified how the implementation of GTG policy during 1999-2006 has impacted farmers' land-use behaviors, and designed a "Farmer Group Decision-Making Model" to simulate the probability of land-use change in the case study area of Mizhi County of Shaanxi Province. Elevation, slope, and heterogeneous characteristics of the farmer households under study were identified to be the key factors influencing farmers' land-use decision-making process and land-use pattern. Classification and Regression Tree were used to classify farmer household groups, and Experience-Weighted Attraction learning model was used to analyze the land use behavior's change before and after the GTG policy. The results showed that farm households' land-use behaviors, namely land reclamation and land abandonment in the study area, has been significantly affected by the GTG program in China since 1999, and the results of simulation in the study showed that possible consequences of land reclamation and abandonment co-exist under all policy scenarios. The spatial distribution and magnitude of land to be affected by such land-use behaviors vary among the villages in the study area. Policy recommendations based on the findings of this study relate to how to protect the effectiveness of the GTG program and to improve the efficient use of the under-used farmland. How and to what extent distance and kinship affect farm households' land-use behavior need to be explored in future research.
  • Agricultural Geography
    Spatial difference of grain yield changes during 1995-2010 and balanced potential output to increase in Shandong Province
    BAI Linchuan, WU Lanfang, SONG Xiaoqing
    2013, 32(8): 1257-1265. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.009
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    Based on spatial autocorrelation analysis of exploratory spatial data, spatial changes and disparities of grain yield per unit area at county level in Shandong Province during 1995-2010 are discussed by using ArcGIS and GeoDa software, and then the potential increase of grain yield per unit area and total yield at regional scale are accessed. The results show that: (1) During 1995-2010, the difference of grain yield per unit area among counties increased first, and then decreased. Among the counties, the northwestern plain and southwestern plain both had poor conditions initially, but the former increased the most quickly in grain yield per unit area and the latter increased slowly; the central and southern hills and Jiaodong Peninsula both had good conditions initially, but they increased slowly. (2) The global spatial autocorrelation of grain yield per unit area change is significantly positive and Global Moran's I is 0.5708. The changes showed a spatially clustering phenomenon on the whole and the characteristic of spatial clustering of regional high value and low value is significant. The regions with "high-high" and "low-low" correlation are the majority. The regions with "H-H" correlation are mostly located in the northwestern plain, however, the regions with "L-L" correlation are mainly distributed in the other three regions. (3) Shandong Province could be divided into 4 first-grade regions and 9 second-grade regions. The balanced potential output per unit area of the 4 first-grade regions could be sorted in descending order as the northwestern plain, central and southern hills, Jiaodong Peninsula, and southwestern plain. The total potential output of Shandong Province is 9.50×106 tons, and the 4 regions could be sorted as the central and southern hills, northwestern plain, southwestern plain, and Jiaodong Peninsula.
    • Reviews
  • Reviews
    Information and communication geography：Discipline nature, development process, and research topics
    SUN Zhongwei, WANG Yang
    2013, 32(8): 1266-1275. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.010
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    Information and communication geography is a new sub-discipline of human geography, which started in 1960s when geographers began to pay attention to telegraph and telephone, and a specialty group dedicated to "communication geography" emerged in the Association of American Geographers, overlapping the interests of the commission on geography of the global information society in the International Geographical Union. The new sub-discipline has been one of the frontiers in the areas of geographical research ever since. At present, controversies still exist among domestic and foreign scholars about the research objects and the name of the research area, which has become the biggest obstacle to the development of the new sub-discipline. Many names have been used at home and abroad, such as communication geography, information geography, geography of telecommunications, virtual geography, geography of cyberspace/cybergeography, geography of the information society, media geography and information and communication geography, etc. Studies indicated that referring this new sub-discipline as information and communication geography is not only an inevitable result of its development, but also consistent with the name of international information and communication technologies. As the progress of the new research field already showed, information and communication geography has been prompted and influenced by information and communication technologies for human geography. The new sub-discipline explores and examines the new meaning and applicability of traditional theories of human geography, as well as develops its own new theories. Furthermore, the study of information and communication geography abroad appears to be divided into the broad sense and the narrow sense approaches, however, it is not the time to conclude on which is better yet. Too much generalization might not be good for the scope definition and growth of this new discipline. Information and communication geography has interdisciplinary nature, especially in that it has varying degrees of crossing with geographical information science and all branches of human geography. The development of international information and communications geography has been divided into three stages: establishment of research interest (1960s-1970s), subject of communication networks (1980s-1990s) and multiple rapid developments (2000 to present). Based on current international research of information and communications geography, this sub-discipline provides seven main research topics, including spatial organization of communication network, geographical context of cyberspace, spatial organization of regional economic activities, organization of the internal and external urban space, cognition and representation of space and place, impact of information and communication technologies on politics and surveillance, and mapping cyberspace. The impact of information and communication technologies on the development of geography is likely only in the early stages, and it will continue to expand the scope and magnitude, but the ultimate extent of the impact in the end is unknown.
  • Reviews
    Trend and hot topics of medical geography
    QI Lanlan, ZHOU Suhong, YAN Xiaopei, GU Jie
    2013, 32(8): 1276-1285. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.011
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    In this paper, based on the discussions on the two main branches, ecological medical geography and health care geography, we reviewed current content and development process of medical geography. Through literature study and use of a software platform, we established a database which helps identify and rank citation rates, vocabulary frequencies, authors' countries and affiliations. We argued that, in contrast to classic literature, medical geography studies in recent years expanded the focuses from "disease" to "health" related geographical issues; research horizons expanded from global to national, to local, to neighborhood, and even to the inner space of a building; more and more research tools became available, and more and more spatial analysis methods have been used. The focuses of the studies of medical geography include: the impact of human development and socio-economic activities on health, spatial relationships between healthcare services, effects of healthcare behavior on the health conditions, the impacts of neighborhood environment, especially socio-economic conditions, health and healthcare equity issues, especially medical services and healthcare for the groups with special needs. The majority of the researchers are mainly from medical and public health fields, followed by the ones from geographic research institutions. Studies of medical geography are mainly in developed American and European countries, as well as the fast developing countries such as China, Brazil, and so on. This paper argued that research in medical geography should expand to a broader scope that includes the study of well-being; the spatial scale of the study would be widened, deepened, and expanded to the topics in virtual space such as online- base medical services; multidisciplinary researches would also be more widely adopted in the future.
  • Reviews
    Review on prehistoric settlement geography research
    LU Peng
    2013, 32(8): 1286-1295. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.012
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    Prehistoric settlement geography is a research field whose research object is geographic phenomenon of prehistoric settlement. It grows with the development of modern archaeology and its increasing interests in prehistoric environment and society. Its goal is to explore spatio-temporal distribution pattern of prehistoric settlements and the mechanism behind it in order to understand the prehistoric human-land relationship. In this paper, main contents and characteristics of prehistoric settlement geography research were introduced first. Then, based on a great number of related papers, the current status of domestic research of prehistoric settlement geography was reviewed. Finally, remaining issues and future research directions were discussed. Domestic research of prehistoric settlement geography has mainly focused on the distribution of prehistoric settlements, settlement site selection, settlement evolution, the relationship between regional environment and the settlements, the relationship between the settlements and cultural factors, interrelations among the settlements, exploration of related technologies and methods, etc. A series of related researches have been carried out in different areas, which not only reflected the regional differences of prehistoric settlement patterns and formation mechanisms, but also promoted the development of environmental archaeology, geography, settlement archaeology and related technologies. The remaining issues of the research of prehistoric settlement geography are as follows: loose connections to other disciplines, biased interpretations by single-factored models, incomplete framework of theory and methodology, etc. And it is necessary to carry out high spatio-temporal resolution research in relatively small areas. As a multidisciplinary cross-over study, prehistoric settlement geography needs participations of geography, archaeology, Quaternary environment and other related disciplines, while keeping human-land relationship research as the main focus. Only in this way will it achieve great progress and development.
  • Reviews
    Regional study of geography and the approach of regional historical geography
    XIONG Mei
    2013, 32(8): 1296-1304. https://doi.org/10.11820/dlkxjz.2013.08.013
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    The history of regional study of geography, as a process of constant review and improvement, has four stages: writing of regional chronicles, description and interpretation of regional differences, quantitative analysis of spatial relationship, and thorough analysis of social process. In fact, the setbacks and revitalizations of modern regional geography study reflect the process in which this discipline benefits from the applications and geographic perspectives of the knowledge and theories of other schools with different philosophical bases and makes breakthroughs in the staggering and isolated research field of traditional regional geography. In the meantime, regional historical geography follows the footsteps of regional study of geography. Oriented toward the objects, paradigms and methodologies of regional geography, regional historical geography gradually has developed the research fields such as: continuous geographic horizontal cross-section reconstruction, regional cultural landscape ecology, location and structure-function system research, and comprehensive studies of regional division, categorization and classification. Since 1970s, regional historical geography has learned to pay more attention to the study of history and culture from regional geography and has gradually moved into the contemporary historical geography "conception" stage. In the past thirty years, the scholars of historical geography in China have made some achievements in the fields of regional historical geography through learning the methodologies and paradigms from their counterparts. However, both the theoretical construction and case study in China are still lagging behind the West. The development of regional historical geography in China can't do without the basic principles and methods of regional geography. We should be oriented to the enlightenment of new regional geography: from traditional research with static descriptions into a thorough analysis of social, cultural and economic aspects, and gradually form a regional system with the integrations of the theories of physical geography, landscape science, regional science, spatial economics, and praxiology. Adhering to the concepts of "people", "place", and "system", we should strengthen the research on the influences of social structure and process on economic development, pay attention to operation process and mechanism of regional systems, understand the interactions among the regions, and make in-depth analysis on characteristics of specific regions. We need to be good at not only explaining natural phenomena with natural reasons and the social phenomena with social reasons, but also explaining the social phenomena with natural reasons and natural phenomena with social reasons. It is important to strengthen the communication between historical geography and regional geography and closely follow the international academic trends and the latest academic achievements.