The construction of smart cities is an important impetus for promoting the development of urbanization. In addition to the technological support, the construction of smart cities should also consider the impact of information technology on city governments, enterprises, and residents' activities and activity space. Based on the analysis of the general situation and consideration of existing problems of the construction of smart cities in China, the authors conclude that the development of smart cities is an inexorable trend to adapt to the strategic transformation of urbanization, upgrading of public services, community development, and solving urban problems. Innovations in geography and their theoretical support function to smart cities are then discussed with regard to the coupling of multiple heterogeneous data, time-space compression, the new mobility paradigm, space of flows, human-nature relationship under new circumstance, and spatiotemporally coordinated development. Also, the innovation research of geography interact with the different systems of smart cities. Based on the research and application of urban geography, we put forward the key aspects of planning and construction of smart cities, including the top design, the distributing of functional zones and spaces, the integration of infrastructure, and rural-urban governance, among others.
The technology of "big data" has profoundly changed our life and society, and advanced scientific research. By taking social and human activities as main data source, this technology is of great potential of applications in human and economic geography. Drawing on recent progress in research, this article analyzes the new applications of big data to the research of urban hotspots, functional areas and boundaries, transportation and consumption behaviors and social geography. Based on these analyses, this article articulates the roles of big data in enriching data sources, adding new research themes, bringing new research paradigms, and stimulating the research of coupling to human-spatial research in human and economic geography. However, the technology of "big data" still needs improved, especially the "bias" issue in collection and the attributes of data. It also needs appropriately positioned in the application in human and economic geography because big data cannot replace the data that are collected from field work, or be applied without proper theoretical grounding and hypothesis, and replace the independent thinking of researchers and decision processes. These factors limit the application of big data, which requires more efforts on big data infrastructure development as well as exploration of human and economic geography. Acknowledging the opportunities and roles of big data application, human and economic geographers should emphasize the following to advance the research of this filed: exploring new data sources and paying closer attention to database construction inhuman and economic geography, establishing a research paradigm towards big data applications, facilitating cross-disciplinary and cross-domain research to strengthen the study of human-nature relations, and emphasizing the research towards human behaviors and demands.
The development of information and communication technologies (ICT) is promoting the construction of smart city, influencing urban transport and residents travel. Urban transport and residents travel are interdependent. Urban transport provides infrastructure services for residents travel, whereas the latter facilitates the development of urban transport through its feedbacks. Relative to urban transport, residents travel is subjective choices of individuals. Smart transportation and travel will improve accessibility, which includes place-based accessibility and individual accessibility. On the one hand, the improvement of place-based accessibility may change urban traffic environment. On the other hand, the improvement of individual-based accessibility may alter residents travel demand. These may change urban land use that in turn would have an impact on urban traffic environment and residents travel demand. Due to the complex relations of smart transport, accessibility, and travel and its related emissions, whether improved accessibility of smart transportation would increase or decrease CO2 emissions from travel is hard to determine. A critical issue for smart transportation in China is to ease traffic congestion and ensure the effective operation of urban transport system, in the meantime, to enhance the efficiency of travel and reduce CO2 emissions through improving accessibility. Therefore, this article proposes a theoretical framework for the study of accessibility and CO2 emissions from travel of smart transportation, and presents some empirical studies by taking the city of Guangzhou as a case, in order to provide a reference for future research.
Under the background that smart city construction has become a national development strategy, traditional urban spatial development models based on the analyses of historical data of population, economy, resource, and environment need to incorporate new sources of data and innovative research framework. This article first discusses the background and connotation of, and relationship between smart city and sustainable development, and then summarizes the Chinese and international research on sustainable urban spatial development models. It concludes that smart city construction provides finer, comprehensive, and real-time data and broadens the spatial and temporal scales of models for urban system modeling, as well as offers new technical means for the simulation of urban system operation. Based on the above, this article presents the overall architecture of an sustainable urban spatial development model based on the construction of smart cities. The model contains four parts that: (1) monitor, collect, and share urban data; (2) decipher and analyze urban operation problems; (3) simulate urban spatial sustainable development and evaluate the related policies and decisions; and (4) design the urban spatial development planning system based on the construction of smart cities. It is important for enriching the theoretical framework of urban sustainable development and guiding the spatial planning and construction practices of smart cities that aim at sustainable development for the ultimate goal.
In the current era of mobile telecommunication, wireless city, mobile city, smart city, and other kinds of new urban forms are emerging, but we know little about the evolution of these new urban spaces. This article explores the spatial disparities of wireless infrastructure in metropolitan area and reveals its adverse effects. It analyzes the spatial distribution of wireless access facilities by GIS technique, using the data of Shanghai CMCC’s wireless local area network (WLAN) hotspots. Despite the rapid expansion of wireless access facilities in the city, disparities between neighborhoods have not been reduced. The spatial digital divide still exists and may have a tendency to expand. Finally, some planning and policy recommendations for wireless city are proposed.
The construction of smart tourist attractions is an important step for the realization of smart tourism. At present, the investigation on smart tourist attractions mainly focuses on technology, management, and services. No research has been conducted on the evaluation indices of smart tourist attractions from the perspective of tourists. To fill this gap, this study used factor analysis method and developed a set of evaluation indices of smart tourist attractions from the tourists' perspective. There are nine aspects of smart tourist attractions that are of significance for their development: smart management system, smart information system, smart tour system, smart broadcasting system, e-pay system, comprehensive smart system, smart security system, smart transport system, and smart tourism resources protection system. Employing fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, this study conducted an empirical evaluation of a smart tourist attraction—the Temple of Confucius and Qinhuai Scenic Site of Nanjing City. Finally, the strengths and weakness of the Temple of Confucius and Qinhuai Scenic Site are analyzed.
In recent years, the smart city concept and development have attracted a great amount of interests worldwide. One of the bases of the functioning of smart city is the sensing and understanding of elements of cities. People are the dominant component of cities and therefore individual spatiotemporal behavior analysis is the key of such sensing and is important to the development of smart cities. Individual spatiotemporal behavior analysis has been hampered by data collection techniques, which seriously limit the development of theoretical research and application. One challenge of individual spatiotemporal behavior data acquisition is to collect indoor location information. With the development of smartphone and indoor positioning techniques, indoor location of individual private persons can be obtained by smartphones. Moreover, the built-in sensors of the smartphone can be used to detect individuals' behaviors. Therefore, smartphone is becoming the ideal terminal device for individual spatiotemporal behavior data collection. This article discusses the application of smartphone for individual spatiotemporal behavior analysis. It reviews the advances of indoor positioning technology and provides an example of individual spatiotemporal behavior analysis using smartphone, and also addresses the significance and existing problems of smartphone-based individual spatiotemporal behavior analysis. Based on the individual spatiotemporal behavior data collected by smartphones, we can analyze in real time the spatial distribution and behavior patterns of urban residents, which can provide the data for smart city planning, design, and development applications, such as smart transportation, smart security, and smart city management. Based on a large amount of individual spatiotemporal behavior data, we can analyze the space-time characteristics of urban functions, which provide the basis for the construction of smart cities.
The wave of smart city construction and people-oriented development has gradually reached the basic organizational unit of cities: communities, and the building of smart community is considered the key to the smart development of Chinese cities. Based on an analysis of the current situation and existing problems in the development of management and service systems of residential communities in Chinese cities, this article offers the view that the development of smart communities should be guided by dynamic planning and based on a management system using grid data and corresponding tools, and fine tune services through the integration of multiple layers of grid and the development and integration of technological standards. The planning of community management should break the physical boundary of communities and re-divide and recreate the space of communities to form "new communities" in terms of behavioral space and social space, and thus achieve improved division and dynamic management of community grids, as well as change of behavior of residents in the communities based on the analyses of their behavioral patterns in space and time and needs.
People-oriented public services are the main content of smart city construction. This study takes the urban development of Shijiazhuang, a provincial capital city undergoing rapid urbanization, as an example to examine problems in public service provision with respect to smart city construction based on practical needs of the city residents. The study used 671 samples from a questionnaire survey. It aimed at providing decision support for the determination of smart city construction direction and priorities. The results show that traffic and air pollution control are in urgent need of improvement by means of smart city development; in the area of food safety it is required that supervision of its key aspects should be strengthened and information collection should cover the whole processes; in the areas of medical care, education, and social security, integration, balanced supply, and sharing of information resources should be strengthened; improving wireless network coverage and online remote services are also widely expected by the public. Overall, smart city construction in Shijiazhuang is still in the initial stage. The actual level of public services is still far from being able to meet the needs of its residents. Significant improvements are needed in the leading role of the government, influence of the market forces, and public participation. Public service provision and management in smart cities can be improved by the optimization of top-level design, integration of information resources, promotion of digital decision support, and improvement in public participation.
In recent years, subjective well-being has attracted increasing attention in psychology, economics, and sociology. Geographical studies on the topic in English language is also growing rapidly. Since measurement is the foundation of empirical studies, this article reviews the major approaches to measuring subjective well-being. We first provide a theoretical framework of subjective well-being, in which two major components are identified: the cognitive component which is mainly known as life satisfaction; and the affective well-being which is usually termed as positive affect and negative affect. Each component can be further divided according to its temporal span. Previous studies mainly adopt self-reported scales to measure different components of subjective well-being, while some facial or ecological indicators are also developed to measure short-term emotions. The self-reported scales are quite flexible and probably provide the most proper insights into individuals' subjectively experienced well-being. These scales can be classified into two types: while the reflective scales select items based on a latent model, the formative scales consider the items as different facets which can be aggregated within an aggregate model or profile model. In general, more reflective scales of subjective well-being have been developed as compared to formative scales. The most widely used scales to measure life satisfaction include the single-item self-anchoring scale and the 5-item Satisfaction with Life Scale . Some formative scales such as the 8-item Personal Well-Being Index (PWI) were also developed to assess one's global life satisfaction. The most often applied measures of affective well-being include the single-item Gurin scale, the multi-item core affect model, and PANAS. Special methods such as the Experience Sampling Method and Day Reconstruction Method and artificial indicators such as U-index were also developed to measure emotional experiences in activity episodes. The current article also reviews the strengths and weakness of those measures. In order to reduce the biases and errors of measurement caused by respondents'cognitive process and the artificially assigned weights for various sub-domains, the multi-item reflective scales are recommended. However, future studies should develop better understanding of the convergence among various measures of subjective well-being. It is also necessary to pay more attention to the cognitive mechanism of evaluating global well-being and select proper models in empirical analysis. Based on the review of measures of subjective well-being and empirical studies in English literature, this article proposes some important topics and issues for future studies in Chinese human geography. This review article mainly contributes to existing literature by providing a framework to understand and design measures of subjective well-being and introducing some widely adopted scales which are readily available for the Chinese geographers to collect data in future studies. This article also points out that existing studies about smart cities mainly focus on the application of information technologies in the analysis of urban built environment and human activities. However, not many studies have investigated the question to what extent smart cities may promote people's subjective well-being. Therefore, the measures of subjective well-being summarized in this article may provide a pool of indicators to monitor national well-being and facilitate the development of smarter cities.
Smart city is the emerging pattern of city development. However, in recent years, frequent urban floods have brought serious challenges to the management and development of smart cities. Urban flooding simulation is not only one of the key technologies of city flood control and mitigation, but also an important decision support tool for smart city disaster risk and emergency management. This article first indicates the connotation of smart city and smart water, and analyzes the new requirements of smart city development and management on urban flood inundation models. Second, it discusses the newly available data support of urban flood simulation models brought by the development of smart cities, and compares three existing hydrological models from the perspective of city emergency management decision-making. Third, this article points out that under the support of big data and technology of smart cities, the hydraulic-based distributed urban flood simulation models have a promising prospect in application. By analyzing the development of urban flood simulation models, we conclude that micro-level simulation, integration with remote sensing and GIS technologies, and emphasis on spatiotemporal process of flood inundation and smart service are the inevitable trend of development of urban flood simulation models.
The fashion of urban nostalgic consumption has penetrated into many a field of the socio-cultural life. A great number of nostalgic restaurants have emerged out of the trend, producing urban nostalgia-themed special spaces of consumption and culture. With the interplay between global and local consumptive cultures, the form of local cultures has been constantly changing. As a result of this change, it becomes more urgent to explore the differences existing in the local construction of various spaces of nostalgic consumption. This research selected two distinctive local restaurants, Tai Ping Koon Restaurant and Brothers Nostalgic Café, as objects for the case study. Based on qualitative research methods including participant observation, in-depth interview, questionnaire survey, and text analysis with a collection of media reports and internet discussion data, this article analyzes the local construction of nostalgic restaurants and place identity from the dimensions of material and emotional spaces. The findings include: (1) Through the presentation and performance of memory, either the re-making of traditions under the gaze of memory (the case of Tai Ping Koon Restaurant) or the traditional re-making under the orientation of nostalgic consumption (the case of Brothers Nostalgic Café) should be seen as constructed forms of the materialized space of consumption in view of adapting to the prevalence of global culture. This, to some extent, feeds back into Zukin's view about restaurant as an integration of globalization and localization. (2) It is the consumers who have shaped the emotional spaces for place of nostalgia and made sense of place identity. As constructed "imagined place," spaces of nostalgic consumption are different from the "authentic place" and the construction of emotional spaces for both of them also varies, being influenced to a great extent by factors such as place embeddedness. (3) The evolvement of spaces of nostalgic consumption is under the influence of the dynamics of the locality, the marketing mechanism, as well as postmodernist consumptive patterns. The extent of place embeddedness determines how spaces of nostalgic consumption evolve and will be located. The deeper the locality embedded, the better the local constructions of material and emotional spaces integrate (the case of Tai Ping Koon Restaurant). However, under the influence of postmodernist consumptive patterns and the marketing mechanism, the evolvement of simulated spaces of nostalgic consumption becomes undetermined due to the lack of local authenticity. This research is instrumental in strengthening the interpretation of the local construction of spaces of nostalgic consumption from the perspective of new cultural geographical studies and also provides a useful reference for advising on the production and practices of spaces of nostalgic consumption for cities undergoing dramatic urban regenerations at present.
The concept of middle class is derived from sociology theories in the Western countries. Scholars in the Western countries developed this concept to explain the emergence of a social group in human society after the first industrial revolution. The emergence of middle class has exerted a profound impact on the political environment, labor market, and housing choices in a country or region, contributing to the urban social space reconstruction. The emergence of middle class also has resulted in gentrification, which has become an important phenomenon in a globalizing social-spatial context. Research on the middle class in Western countries has been closely associated with the changing concerns and paradigms in the literature. This paper reviews the research on the middle class in Western countries, which is divided into the following three periods: (1) the first period is before 1960. The research focused on the concept of the middle class, the spatial distribution of middle class communities, and middle class formation mechanism; (2) the second period is from the 1960s to the late 1980s. Studies focused on the middle class population and their choice of housing and gentrification; (3) the third period is since the 1990s. Subjects of studies are more diversified, focusing on redefining the middle class, reconsideration of the gentrification formation mechanism , the creative class, middle class communities and social spatial justice, consumer behavior, political role, and environmental awareness. The emergence of middle class in China is closely associated with the economic transition in China since the reform and the opening to the outside world in 1978. The establishment of market system, high-speed economic growth and urbanization, industrial restructuring, and the development of higher education have prompted the development of middle class in China. Studies done by researchers in China can be divided into two different stages: (1) before 2000, the research focused on introducing the concept and theories related to middle class in China; (2) after 2000, the middle class population has experienced a rapid increase in China, which has been attracting increasingly more attention from scholars. The research focuses on the definition of middle class in the context of the Chinese society, the formation mechanism of the middle class, and the gentrification in China. Compared with the research on middle class in Western countries, the study of middle class in China started later, and still does not address many relevant issues in sufficient details. There is a lack of systematic analysis of middle class in China, as well as unaddressed theoretical and methodological issues. Given the fact that middle class in China has been experiencing a dramatic growth, as was in other western countries a few decades ago, the research on middle class in China should better integrate western theories, and should also pay much more attention to the formation of middle class, the characteristics of middle class population and their living spaces, consumer behavior, community, gentrification, and stratification in the Chinese society.
Literary geography has gained increasing attention from the disciplines of literature and geography. The two disciplines, however, have disparate perspectives on literary geography research. Based on existing literature, this article presents a critical, comparative analysis of literary geography of the two disciplines. There is a steady stream of literature concerned with literary geography from a literary perspective. In contrast, there is a dearth of debates regarding literary geography in the field of geography. Chinese geographical research on literary geography is largely absent to date. The current segregated, discipline-based approach has given rise to the false impression of juxtaposition of two literary geographies. In response, the article calls for a synergetic approach to breaking the disciplinary boundaries in terms of theory, methodology, and practice.
