All biological and abiotic have dual attributes in the natural ecosystems. They are the integral part of ecosystem, and basic resources for the sustainable development of the human society. Objective and accurate assessment of ecosystem, not just a scientific question of ecosystem ecology, is also a management issue of the sustainable development of the human society. To objectively find and understand change features of ecosystem by comprehensive assessment is a popular and difficult topic in ecological research field, and is one of the key propositions of sustainable development of human society. Integrated ecosystem assessment is to better serve the integrated ecosystem management and enhance the ecological system of human society support ability. In this processing and behavior, the ecosystem and its service ability for human society are analyzed, and their statuses and changes are found and understood. There are many core contents in the integrated ecosystem assessment, such as the ecosystem management, ecosystem services, ecological assets. Facing the multiple, comprehensive and open ecosystem, some countries and international organizations have carried out many explorations and practices of integrated ecosystem assessment, and put forward various evaluation frameworks. There are still many problems and challenges. This paper examines the progress of ecosystem assessment, including the concept, framework model and main content, development trends and challenges. Based on the complex “social-economic-natural” ecosystems, interactive process of society and ecosystem, concept and content of ecosystem management, ecosystem services, ecological assets and their relationship are discussed. According to the practices and cases of integrated ecological system assessment, which include lots of assessment in global, regional, and national scales, four integrated assessment framework models are summed up. They are "ecological pressure-policy responses","ecological services-human well-being", "natural benefits-ecology management", "comprehensive status-change trends". However, as ecosystems are diverse, integrated, complex, and open, lots of scientific questions should be paid more attention in the future, including integrated assessment framework and its relevant theoretical basis, indicators and methods of ecosystem assessment, observation technology integration and data assimilation methods, temporal and spatial scales.
The oceans have long been recognized as increasingly important natural resources for humans. Humans, especially coastal residents, depend on ocean systems for essential and valuable life-supporting provisions, such as ocean resources, ocean traffic, seashore tourism, etc. Oceans are extremely sensitive and vulnerable, regardless of their substantial productivity. Long-term of ocean- and land-based human activities have increasingly threatened the oceans through direct and indirect means and caused the degradation of structure, function and provision service of ocean systems. Recently, theoretical and practical studies on man-land relationship have already become a research hotspot both at home and abroad. However, there are relatively few studies on man-sea relationship. Furthermore, regional system of man-sea relationship is a complex system that constitutes two relatively independent, but interactional subsystems, human and ocean. Yet, few studies have focused on the perspective of complex system. For decades, marine economy has been rapidly developing in China, and human impact on marine is gradually deepened. In this context, studies on regional system of man-sea relationship will be of important theoretical and practical significance to the coastal regions of China. Referring information entropy and synergetic theory, this study proposes a general concept of synergetic development mechanism of regional system of man-sea relationship, and sets up the index system of development level assessment. Then, the development levels of human-society and marine resources-environment subsystems were calculated by AHP-PP model from 1996 to 2012 in coastal regions of China. Information entropy scores and order degrees of regional system of man-sea relationship are calculated by using information entropy model in the article. The results indicate that information entropy scores of regional system of man-sea relationship go down with each passing year and order degrees show an upward trend, but regional differences are noticeable in coastal regions of China. Furthermore, the synergetic development model of regional system of man-sea relationship was established for recognizing the synergetic development classification of regional systems and parameters of the model are estimated by accelerating genetic algorithm. The findings confirm that three man-sea relationship patterns are recognized in the eleven coastal provinces. The man-sea relationship of Hubei, Guangxi and Hainan are conflicting; Tianjin, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian are predatory; and Shanghai, Shandong, and Guangdong are cooperative. The causes for these different synergetic development patterns are analyzed and countermeasures for enhancing synergetic development are briefly put forward in this study.
The information about land cover and its dynamic change is essential for the global change and regional sustainable development studies. With the development of remote sensing and land cover interpretation technology, the land cover information derived from satellite remote sensing imagery become the only way to obtain land surface information effectively and economically, especially in large-scale regions. Free global land cover products, e. g. GLOBCOVER2009, GLC2000, MODIS2000, GLOBCOVER2005, are now popularly used by worldwide scientists in many diverse fields. To get a cross-referenced research results, it is fundamental and critical for secitists to pre-estimate the accuracy of each land product and pre-assess the consistency of different land products in a specific region. Supported by the above 4 land cover products, this study aims at analyzing the consistency and heterogeneity, by using area correlation analysis, mix-up pixs analysis, spatial consistency analysis, and reference precision analysis methods. The results show: (1) The 4 land cover products have similar descriptions about the the construction of European land cover. Cropland and forestland are the dominant land cover types, followed by grassland, water body and other land cover types. (2) Cropland land and forest land have the lowest mix-up ratios and the highest consistencies, while the grassland, shrubland, and bareland have the highest mix-up ratios and low consistencies. (3) There are 75% land area in Europe owing a relative high consistency, which means at least 3 products indicate the same type among all 4 products. Specifically, in the Eastern Scandinavian Peninsula, the Central-eastern Europe plains, and the Paris basin, there are higher consistency. While in the western Scandinavian Peninsula, the Kola Peninsula, the northern Pechora River-southern Novaya Zemlya, the Iberian Peninsula and the downstream region of Volga river, there are lower consistency among different products. (4) The reference precision between different land cover products ranges from 38.56% to 77.65%. The group of GLOBCOVER2009/GLOBCOVER2005 has the highest reference precisions, which refers the error caused by land changes is largely smaller than the error caused by the interpretation process due to different institutions, sensors, land classification systems, and interpretation methods.
By using the land use/cover data for the early 1980 and 2000 in Northeast China, we carried out two 21-year (1980-2000) simulations, respectively, with the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model. This paper is aimed to investigate the effects of cropland extension on climate in Northeast China. In winter and spring, the replacement of natural grassland and forest by cropland enhanced land surface albedo, and surface net solar radiation was therefore reduced. As a consequence, the surface sensible heat flux decreased and the cooling effect occurred. Mostly, the local surface air temperature dropped by 0.1°C to 1.0°C. The cooling strength is comparable to the contemporaneous background temperature change which is induced by large circulation and sea surface temperature changes. In summer and autumn, the replacement of nature vegetation by cropland reduced land surface albedo, and surface net solar radiation was therefore increased. Meanwhile, the surface latent heat flux increased largely and the surface sensible heat flux decreased. As a result, there was also a cooling effect on local surface climate. These findings demonstrate detectable effects of land use/cover changes on local temperature. The effects of agricultural development on summer precipitation vary with background climate. In the South-Drought and North-Flood years, the decreased precipitation is detected in the Hulun Buir to central Heilongjiang province and central Jilin province and around the Liaodong Gulf while the precipitation increases in common boundary area of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Inner Mongolia. In the South-Flood and North-Drought years, the precipitation anomaly pattern is approximately reverse to the abovementioned South-Drought and North-Flood years with the exception that there is still decreased precipitation around the Liaodong Gulf. However, due to limited area with land use/cover changes, the impact on regional mean temperature is very limited.
Taking the counties as the basic spatial unit, we examine the spatio-temporal dynaimc of rurality in Northeast China by evaluating the rurality indexes quantitatively of the counties in the years of 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012, and then divide the counties into five types such as the weakest rurality, weaker rurality, moderate rurality, stronger rurality and the strongest rurality. Moreover, with the help of ArcGIS and Exploratory Spatial data Analysis method (ESDA), we identify and analyze the "hot spots" and ''cold spots'' areas of the rurality in different periods, as well as the pattern of spatio-temporal evolution. We find that the rurality indexes of the counties in Northeast China are generally high and tend to decline from 2000 to 2012, and the rurality indexes of the counties in the northern part are higher than those of the southern part, which are directly proportional to the distance of its regional central city and takes on the pattern of circularity, that is, the closer to its central city, the smaller the rurality index is. The counties whose rurality indexes are similar tend to be agglomerated, and the counties with low-low or high-high values tend to be strengthened in spatial agglomeration from 2000 to 2012, accompanied by the transformation of the "hot spots" to the northern part and the "cold spots" to the southern part. We also find that national policies, industrial structure, agricultural mechanization, increase of chemical fertilizer, and foreign direct investment are the primary factors affecting rurality and its variation of space structure.
As the consequences of urbanization trends and climate changes in recent years, the impacts and interactions of flood disasters have become significantly complicated. As a complex system engineering, flood disaster risk assessment takes on very important meaning in the theory and practice of flood control. What is more, the risk assessment model is the foundation and core of risk management and emergency response of flood disaster. So, the flood disaster assessment model has a deterministic influence on the flood disasters risk assessment results. The flood disaster risk is the consequence of the interactions between different factors in a complicated flood disaster system. According to the characteristics of flood disaster complex system, agent-based modeling (ABM) technology, belonging to complex system modeling, is employed in dynamic risk assessment for flood disaster. This paper proposed a multi-agent based theoretical model for dynamic flood risk assessment. First, the framework of dynamic risk assessment model, namely flood risk dynamical assessment multi agent system (FRDAMAS), is constructed for flood disaster based on the analysis of the complex flood disaster system from the perspective of complex system modeling. Second, based on research on each kind of agent model in FRDAMAS, a reactive agent model is used to construct single agent model of hazard environment and a deliberative agent model is used to construct the agent models of hazard factor, hazard effect object and risk analysis. Meanwhile, the procedures, the mechanism and the rules of abovementioned agents are studied. Third, taking risk analysis agents alliance as an example, we analyze interior structures and procedures of the four types of agents alliance involved in FRDAMAS, including hazard environment agents alliance, hazard factor agents alliance, hazard effect object agents alliance, and risk analysis agents alliance. Finally, the dynamic assessment of risk population during the whole process of the rain-storm flood disaster in the Huaihe River Basin is implemented using the proposed method and DEM data with a spatial resolution of 30 m on NetLogo platform. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively assess the dynamic changes of population risk during the whole process of flood disaster. And it is also important that the results will have a strong guiding significance for population risk assessment, emergence response, and emergence management for flood disasters.
In recent years, some new areas of development have been proposed for natural disaster science. It is suggested that the discipline should try to attach more importance to recognizing disaster loss accumulation and amplification trends, re-evaluate the mechanisms of major natural disasters, and facilitate interdisciplinary research between natural disaster and complexity science. The 2008 Chinese ice storm struck the most populated and economically developed region of China, and direct economic losses exceeded $22.3 billion (indirect losses may have been even greater). Recognition of the formation mechanism of the 2008 Chinese ice storm will be very important for developing integrated disaster risk reduction strategies. This study employed daily temperature and precipitation data from a 0.5°×0.5° gridded dataset released by China's National Meteorological Information Center to evaluate the synthetic hazard process of the severe cold surge, ice-snow events, and corresponding frozen disasters in southern China in 2008. More specifically, we analyzed the spatial-temporal structure and complexity of the catastrophes by using bipartite networks. Results indicated that the large freezing rain and snow disaster was a typical multi-disaster overlaying event. The overlaying of freezing rain and snow amplified the risks of other hazards such as critical infrastructure failures. Moreover, the timing of the event, which occurred during the Chinese New Year, increased the vulnerability of people to exposures (i.e., they were more likely to be traveling). Low mountain-hilly terrain and high population density reduced the stability of the fostering environment. The freezing rain and snow catastrophes in 2008 showed the mathematical characteristics of small-world features. In terms of spatial data, the occurrence of hazards was clustered when the unprecedented ice struck the region; in terms of temporal data, the intervals between successive waves were too short for ice to melt or be broken, thus disaster losses were accumulated and amplified through the small-world features of the hazards. Networks of freezing rain and snow catastrophes in 2008 had a typical core-periphery structure. The spatial core nodes were Sichuan, Guizhou, Chongqing, Anhui, Hubei, Shaanxi, and Hunan (provincial units); the temporal core nodes were 1.13, 1.15, 1.17-1.22, and 1.25-2.4. Overall, these results highlight that complex network theory can be used advantageously in the analysis of the loss accumulation and amplification trends associated with multi-disaster events. Such techniques can also be used effectively to describe the spatial and temporal evolution of multi-disaster events and support the understanding of disaster dynamics.
One of the important foundations for the study of urban spatial structuring is dissecting the interactive mechanisms among the different functional urban spaces. In this paper, we focus on the following four types of functional urban spaces: residential space, industrial space, service space and ecological space, and we take Changchun city as our primary example. The land status maps and other statistics covering the years 2002, 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2012 provide the main data for this article. With the help of ArcGIS, SPSS and other analysis tools, the study examines the coupling relationship of functional urban spaces. We present two indexes: the Static Coupling Degree (expansion intensity index and coupling coefficient of land use conversion) and Dynamic Coupling Degree (Shannon-Weaver diversity index) — to study the coupling features and driving forces of interaction of functional urban spaces. In this dynamic research process, residential space is the focus of our study. Our research reveals the following: ① During the period from 2002 to 2012, urban spatial expansion in Changchun had still not escaped the ring pattern. Residential space shows excessive expansion, which is incompatible with other functional urban spaces. This gives the near field expansion of urban space a low coupling degree. ② Functional urban space coupling shows significant geographical differences. Both the dynamic and static coupling degrees of the core area are higher than those of the peripheral area, which indicates that the core area has entered a phase of reconstruction involving greater integration of the functional urban spaces. The peripheral area is still experiencing a rapid expansion, with relatively single function like residential districts or manufactory zones. ③ Implementing various coupling degree indexes and using a systematic clustering method and empirical discrimination method, we divide the central city of Changchun into six space types: completely mature functional urban space with a high coupling degree, relatively mature functional urban space with a high coupling degree, new functional urban space with a high coupling degree, relatively stable functional urban space with a low coupling degree, new functional urban space with a low coupling degree and special functional urban space with a low coupling degree. ④ The driving factors of the geographical differences of functional urban space coupling include multiple influences, such as government policy, economic development and population growth, lifestyle changes, the interaction between urban expansion and environmental protection, urban planning guidance and so on. Among these influences, urban planning plays a vital role as the bridge which allows public participation to gradually affect the evolution of functional urban spaces.
Many researchers have paid more attention to regional industrial land change in China. Industrial land change has unique characteristics in the resource exhausted cities. Daqing city, located in the southeast part of Heilongjiang province, is an important petroleum resource exhausted city. Geographical Info-Tupu is a method of processing and showing information to reflect spatial-temporal order of objects in the world. This paper, with the theory and methods of geographical Info-Tupu and GIS as a basis, establishes a grid info Tupu models by integrating TM image, large-scale topographic map, urban planning map, and other spatial data. The spatial pattern and changing law of industrial land use change pattern in Daqing are also revealed quantitatively. The results showed that: (1) Agricultural land was mainly found in outlying areas where mineral resources were not abundant, and showed an increasing trend and further concentration. (2) The most dramatic changes were in mining areas, and industrial land was gradually moving from the traditional mining zones to the new industrial zones. (3) The tertiary industry land was mainly in the city center area, which was distributed along the core neighborhoods. The tertiary industry land increased slowly in extensive development mode. This suggests that land planning plays a leading role in industrial land conversion in the resource exhausted city.
The spatial pattern of headquarters of large enterprises in a city is influenced by urban development and is also the driving force of the restructuring of urban form. The paper explores the distribution and influence mechanism of the headquarters of listed enterprises based on the detailed information of publicly listed enterprises and the location of their headquarters. The results show that, (1) Headquarters of listed enterprises in Shanghai displays an obvious polycentric pattern. Most headquarters are agglomerated in central urban districts. There are several clusters of headquarters, including Lujiazui and Caohejing development districts in central area and development zones in the suburbs. The scales of the headquarters clusters show a decreasing trend from the center to the periphery area. (2) The density of headquarters declines sharply with the growing distance from the city center. (3) The listed enterprise headquarters also tend to be located near the major traffic roads. More than 77% of the headquarters are located within 500 meters away from the major traffic lines. (4) The result of econometric model indicates that enterprise ownership, the year of the listing, scale and industry type of enterprises significantly affect the location of the headquarters of the large firms. The state-owned, larger and older enterprises are more inclined to locate their headquarters near the central area of the city, while the private-owned, smaller and newly listed firms generally locate their headquarters in the suburban area, resulting the dual structure of the spatial pattern of headquarters. (5) We argue that market oriented reform, government planning and political pecking order of firms of different ownership can explain such dual structure of the spatial pattern of the headquarters in Shanghai. Agglomeration economies and location advantages induce headquarters to be agglomerated in central districts. Urban planning is the driving force for many headquarters being located in development zones of the city. Finally, the political pecking order and the rapid rise of land rents in the inner city lead more privately-owned and smaller enterprises to locate their headquarters in the suburbs, resulting in the restructure of the spatial pattern of headquarters. (6) The spatial pattern of listed enterprises also affects the urban form and may reshape the urban structure. With the surburbanization of industry and housing, more and more new headquarters are agglomerated in the new urban districts. The spread of enterprise headquarters and the benefits of headquarters economy in new urban districts will strengthen management functions in the suburbs and help to reduce the overcrowding of inner city.
Since the implementation of "Western Region Development Program", western China has embraced a foreign trade boom. The foreign trade evolvement in western China not only creates a broader scope for the national economic development, but also completes the overall opening-up of China. Under this background, this paper uses several indices (such as trade intensity index, revealed comparative advantage, coefficient of variation, export similar index) to analyze the spatial pattern and trade structure of foreign trade in western China. The research results show that western China has witnessed a divergence in provincial foreign trade expansion. As trade of Sichuan and Chongqing grows quickly and turns into the core driving force of the whole trade in the western region, while Xinjiang, Yunnan and Guangxi have become the pioneer in the western frontier region. Second, the results illustrate that the major trade partners by scale are traditional major traders such as USA, and resource-exporters such as Australia and Kazakhstan. In contrast, neighboring countries and developing countries in Africa are the closest trade companions of western China. Third, western China has a gradually optimizing export structure with the improving proportion of mechanical and electrical equipment, whereas the most competitive commodities are still resource and labor intensive products. Fourth, provinces in western China can be divided into two export groups and three import groups based on the trade structure similarity. The first export group, including Chongqing, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Guangxi and Gansu, is featured by exporting mechanical and electrical equipment; the second group, consisting of Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and Qinghai, mainly export textiles, clothing and chemicals. The first import group, including Chongqing, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Qinghai, focuses on mechanical and electrical equipment; the second import group, consisting of Guizhou, Yunnan and Gansu, with ores, slag and ash as leading imports; the third import group, including Xinjiang, Guangxi and Inner Mongolia, is featured by importing mineral fuels and its products.
The spatial distribution of the manufacturing industry based on industrial linkage has always been an important research topic. Using statistical data of 17 manufacturing industry segments in China (input-output table) and 286 prefecture-level spatial cells, this paper carries out input-output analysis and uses spatial regression models to determine the industrial linkage and spatial distribution of the manufacturing industry in China. Employing ordinary least squares (OLS), spatial lag regression model (SLM) and spatial error regression model (SEM), this paper determines whether there are correlations on spatial distribution between some manufacturing industry segments; it also aims to determine whether the distribution has strong industrial linkage to a specific segment. This paper also examines the characteristics of the industrial combinations with both strong industrial linkage and spatial correlation. Results show that, firstly, in 68 industrial combinations, 39 of these have both strong industrial linkage and spatial correlation, which proves the Marshallian externalities to some extent. Secondly, labor/labor-intensive manufacturing industries and capital/technology-intensive manufacturing industries can easily form such industrial combinations. Third, more than half of the manufacturing industry segments have positive correlations between industrial linkage and spatial correlation. Finally, "pgdp", "city", “kmt", and "zone" have good feedback, indicating that these elements have effects on the spatial distribution of the manufacturing industry in China. Apart from industrial combinations, this paper uses geographically weighted regression model (GWR) to study the spatial distribution of the degree of spatial correlation of 39 industrial combinations. Results show that industrial combinations with higher degree of spatial correlations are generally located in developing provinces (Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Hunan and Jiangxi), and not in developed provinces (Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Zhejiang) or under-developed provinces (Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Tibet). Parts of the spatial distribution of the degree of spatial correlation of industrial combinations have regularities. Labor/labor-intensive manufacturing industries and capital/technology-intensive manufacturing industries differ in terms of the spatial distribution of the degree of spatial correlation. Moreover, the industrial combinations with higher degree of spatial correlations are basically the same in Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning. To ensure the future development of the manufacturing industry, the government should pay more attention to the mutual coordination and spatial correlation between manufacturing industry segments with strong industrial linkage. Formulating corresponding industrial linkages based on different manufacturing industry divisions and geographic spaces shall also play a positive role in the optimization of the spatial layout, further transforming and upgrading the manufacturing industry in China.
This paper firstly calculates the carbon emissions of tourism industry of five provinces based on the concept of "tourist consuming minus coefficient". Then it evaluates the tourism industry efficiencies and conducts a comparative analysis with the traditional DEA model and the undesirable output DEA model. The results are shown as follows. The rank of Hainan's carbon emissions of the tourism industry is always the lowest. The growth rate of Hubei' carbon emissions is the largest, and Beijing is the only declining area from 2009 to 2011. For per capita carbon emissions, Hainan tourism industry ranks first while Beijing and Hainan show a declining trend year by year. The overall level of the comprehensive and decomposition efficiencies in five provinces is high without considering carbon emissions, and it is in line with the fact that regional tourism as a pillar industry is attached great importance. The tourism industry efficiencies in the five provinces change irregularly while carbon emissions are considered. Tourism comprehensive technical efficiencies change from the regular status of decline or steadiness in 2009 to the irregular status in 2010-2011, which are determined by the combined effects between pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency. In the future, China should strengthen coordination between tourism energy conservation and optimal allocation of tourism resources, and improve the tourism industry efficiencies according to the level of local technology and market power advantages.
In the development or protection programmes related to local community, the subjective attitudes of community people influence the feasibility of planned projects directly. Finding an adaptive approach for the community opinion expression and communication with other interest groups is the key to effective community participation. Using participatory mapping technique and semi-structure interview, we investigated the perceived landscape values of 243 residents in 9 villages in Han Chang'an City Historical Site area. With the hotspot analysis, correspondence analysis and value compatibility index analysis, the mapping data and interviews were analyzed, and some features of the community landscape value were revealed, including landscape value spatial pattern, correspondence relationship of landscape value to landuse and compatibility of landscape value with the present village relocation programme. Based on those analyses, 4 potential community attitude type zones in the study area were distinguished. The results show that: ① the community attitudes indicated by compatibility of Han Chang'an City Historical Site are location-specific, and the spatial differentiation of the subjective attitudes towards local development or protection in an area provide more detailed social data for community related spatial planning, management and conflict control; ② there exist correspondence relations between the community perceived landscape values and landscape physical elements (landuse) in the case region, which will be conducive to explain social phenomena caused by landscape possible changes; ③participatory mapping and landscape value method provide a practical tool for studying perceived landscape of local community people, and cartographic visualization, statistical analysis and index modeling can be useful for revealing the spatial pattern of the landscape values.
Since the reform and opening up, the migration of floating population from rural to urban area, which rebuilds China's urban size system, is being mirrored in China. And there was a large gap of floating population among cities of different sizes. According to census data in 1990, 2000 and 2010, this paper builds up the spatial database of urban floating population and total population. Referring to the theory and the parameters meaning of urban total population rank-size rule, this paper puts forward an assumption that it is similar to explore mathematic rule of urban floating population rank-size distribution by calculating the parameters and identifying the fractal scaling region. According the coupling relationship between rank-size distributions of urban floating population and total population, this paper divided cities into four coupling types in terms of absorbing floating population, which are absolutely advanced type, relatively advanced type, absolutely lagging type and relatively lagging type. Some interesting findings are listed as follows. (1) China's urban floating population rank-size distribution was also submitted to typical power function rule, with a high-rank oriented aggregation feature. What's more, agglomeration power was stronger than dispersive power which improves the degree of aggregation. (2) Among the four types, the majority of cities have always been belonged to the absolutely lagging type, which means that the majority of Chinese cities still have rather large potential for absorbing more floating population. (3) The cities of different sizes located in southeastern coastal urban agglomeration and capital cities in central and western China were usually characterized as the absolutely advanced type or the relatively advanced type. These cities should focus on making floating population into local residents. While those cities with middle & small sizes located in northern China's coastal areas, central China, western China and Northeast China were usually characterized as the absolutely lagging type or the relatively lagging type. These cities should enhance the ability of absorbing floating population. (4) There were various factors affecting China's urban floating population rank-size distribution, including the gap of urban economy, the level of public service, the personal geographical cognition and settlement intention of floating population. Hopefully, this paper can promote the researches on urban migration and assist decision-making of urbanization policies in China.
Using the concept of "production of space", this paper analyses the relation between festivals and local cultural spaces by a case of Qianmen-Dashila District in Beijing. The methodologies are survey of landscape, questionnaire and interview. In this case study, we analyse the role of the local government in the process of space production, who has the allocation power of public resources to produce space than the ordinary people. The study also shows the nature of "third space" in this area. The conclusions of this paper are as follows. Firstly, the local government can use administrative and financial approaches to organize local festivals. It has absolute power to symbolize a physical space with new cultural meanings, then reproduce a space. Secondly, the local government tried to create non-exclusive consumption conditions of festivals, which are public goods. So the citizens could have access to festivals events freely and equally. It is an opposite case of space reproduction in capitalism system under some situations. The aim of the space reproduction in this case is not spatial exploitation. Thirdly, the festivals constructed a kind of "third space", which integrate "idea and practice", "self and others", where people can reproduce space of festivals as agents. Fourthly, the festival events root in the history of this area endowed a unique cultural image. They also increased the cultural capital by giving the replicated events in any other places. Two suggestions are extended from the conclusions. The first one is that organizers and designers of such kind of festivals should root festivals in local history, to accumulate unique and sustainable cultural capital for physical space. The second suggestion is that organizers should lead individual participants to strengthen ties between their daily practices and abstract symbols, lead them to understand the image of an area in a city, to form an integrated identity.
