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Nationwide migrations have drawn much attention from both geographical and social sciences. Compared to census-data-based studies, data collected from broadly used location-awareness devices enable us to describe migrant patterns with timely and fine spatial resolutions. Using a mobile positioning dataset, this paper first analyzes the spatial patterns of mobile-data-based active population estimation (MAPE) and aims to uncover the socioeconomic factors associated with migrant patterns based on the MAPE change around the Chinese Spring Festival of 2016. Time series analysis presents obvious regular patterns and characteristics of MAPE before and during the holiday. Results from a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model show that MAPE differences are significantly associated with the development of secondary and tertiary industries, wage levels and foreign investments. Spatial disparities of the GWR model coefficients reveal that areas in China have different degrees of association with the explanatory variables. Explanations of this spatial nonstationary phenomenon are further detailed with the perspective of a geographical background. Finally, associated social and economic development strategies among cities in China are analyzed, and policy implications regarding the newly emerged data and their insightful findings are discussed.

Urban gated communities have become increasingly common worldwide in both academic and policy discourse over recent decades. In contrast, gated communities in rural areas, a newer phenomenon, are rarely analyzed. This paper focuses on the unique phenomenon of gated villages that have emerged in the Beijing metropolitan area. We aim to explore the content, mechanism, heterogeneities etc. of gated villages, and how they differentiate from urban gated community. Five gated villages were selected for fieldwork and 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted with villagers, migrant tenants, heads of village committees, local government officers, and academics. Based on the framework of structuration theory, this paper analyzes the mechanism behind the formation of gated villages, which differ from urban gated communities. Based on the case studies, this paper concludes that: (1) the formation of the gated village is the culmination of interactions between complex dynamics of regional elements and the intellectual responses of various actors under the context of transitional rural China; (2) although the gated village appears similar to urban gated communities, it is in essence a new institutional tool of social management rather than a simple transfer of existing gated community structures into rural regions; (3) the consequences of the gated village are in general positive and can be enhanced by restricting physical size and by improvement of government-village co-operation.

Residential communities are the basic living units in Chinese cities. Housing prices are closely associated with the community location and surrounding support facilities. When selecting satisfactory residential accommodation, potential real estate purchasers prioritize the community location in a city at the macro-level and then consider other micro-factors (i.e., the floor, orientation, structure, etc.). This paper attempts to explore the relationship between housing prices and locational factors at the community level. We collect the current market prices of 545 residential communities built in the last decade in Ningbo, the second largest city in Zhejiang Province. Then, thirteen locational factors of five dimensions are identified to research their influences on housing prices. In the process of selecting certain locational variables, both extant features and additional features (i.e., planned ones) are considered. The geographic field model is introduced to quantify the external effects of locational factors, due to its advantages of producing more accurate results than that of traditional distance-based measure methods. Then, regression analysis is performed based on the average housing prices of residential communities and explanatory variables by the ordinary least squares model and the geographically weighted regression. The regression coefficients demonstrate that the externalities of parks, lakes, department stores, banks, secondary schools and rail transit have significant but spatially non-stationary effects on housing prices. The results provide references for local real estate planning departments and potential real estate purchasers.

Sustainability remains an undeniable, yet obscure, destination for humanity to reach. Although progress has been made, there remains no agreed upon method for spatial scientists, nor landscape and regional planners to use during sustainable development assessments. Furthermore, limited examples exist that investigate relationships between-landscape form (e.g. urban configuration) and population dynamics (e.g. number of settlements)- and a local measure of sustainable development. Using a recently published local sustainable development index (LSDI) for Moldova, a regional spatial analysis was created to further elucidate strengths and weaknesses of index-based assessments of sustainable landscape function. Using a one-to-many relationship, sixty-six landscapes were joined to 399 mean LSDI sample locations for the quantitative spatial assessment ( n = 399). A rarity of this study was that it employed the Eastern School of Geography's “landscape units” for Moldova during geospatial data aggregation and spatially enabled regression. Moran's I scatterplot and spatial correlogram were used to visualize spatial autocorrelation dynamics of LSDI. Three local conditional autoregressive (CAR) models were made, with all explaining over 70% of LSDI variation. The two strongest positive predictors of LSDI were city population density and road intersection density, while the two most consistent negative were settlement density and distance between urban land cover patches (ENN_AM). Findings suggest index-based landscape valuations could suffer from spurious inferential correlations when landscape-calculated sub-metrics (i.e., proportion agricultural land) are included within evaluation indices. This phenomenon complicates the interpretation of results during regional analyses, thus potentially hindering sustainable development planning and policy responses across spatial scales.

Overcrowding in informal housing is a core problem in international development debates, whereby slum upgrading is viewed as a dominant policy to integrate formal and informal areas. Conceptually, challenges to socio-spatial integration are associated with unbalanced development processes of urban de- and re-densification beyond the housing level. However, a lack of empirical understanding of these processes limits the case for redistributive land use policies to complement slum upgrading. To address this gap, our study adopts an exploratory approach, applying GIS-based techniques to population census and open data on land use in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in order to analyze the distribution of population densities across residential built-up types in informal and informal areas, although there are constrains related to small-scale spatial data sources on urban density. This shows that informal settlements are indeed the densest residential built-up type in the city while revealing the underlying spatial inequality between informal settlements and low-rise, high-standard residential areas. We suggest that more emphasis be placed on the design and implementation of redistributive policies to avoid spatialized forms of inequality associated with uneven urban development. This will ensure the spatial and social integration of urban areas.

Improving the quality of economic and social development is the common goal of all countries. Since China is at the inflection point shifting from high-speed development to high-quality development (HQD), a systematic study on China's HQD evaluation system is crucial. This research elaborated the connotation of HQD in the context of China and established a five dimension indicator system of HQD at the prefecture-city level. Then, we calculated the HQD indexes of 301 prefectures and explored the spatial pattern and development lagging regions. The results show that significant regional differences exist in the HQD comprehensive index, the coordination index, and the proposed five dimension indexes. The average values of people's livelihood and innovation efficiency are relatively low, which are the weak aspects of HQD. Economic scale, urban land scale, and urban population scale are positively correlated with the HQD comprehensive index. One hundred sixty prefectures with problems in HQD are identified. The implications for accelerating HQD involve improving the incentive mechanism, adopting pertinent strategies that fit the regional conditions, and prioritizing the Yellow River Basin, Northeast China, and Yunnan-Guangxi region.

Urban-rural integration (URI), as a tendency of urban-rural development worldwide, is an inevitable way to create a coordinated and sustainable human society. China has been haunted by a variety of issues related to uncoordinated urban-rural interaction in recent decades and is in the midst of a critical stage faced with great challenges and opportunities as well in realizing urban-rural integration. Therefore, only by fully understanding the URI characteristics in different regions over vast China can we better formulate and implement targeted strategies and regionally adapted policies to boost URIs in the new era. This paper develops a conceptual framework based on the basis, driver and goal (i.e., BDG framework) of the URI system, which could potentially reflect the interaction mechanism between urban and rural areas. Then, the URI index (URII) was constructed based on 39 indices to measure the regional differentiation and explore the spatiotemporal evolution of the URI level from 2000 to 2018. The results showed that: (1) during the study period, the overall URI in China remained at a low level, and the evolution of the URII demonstrated a U-shaped curve, with 2006 as the inflection point, after which the URI level continuously increased. (2) The URII was characterized by significant spatial agglomeration as “high in the east and low in the western and central regions”. Hot spots of the URI level included Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Zhejiang and Fujian in China's eastern part, while the cold spots were concentrated in the transition zones between the eastern and western parts of China, mainly composed of Sichuan, Hubei, Shaanxi and Gansu. (3) Three types of URIs were identified using the latent profile analysis (LPA) method, corresponding to the early, middle and later stages of URI development in China, and their spatial distribution presented a gradient descending pattern from the southeast coast to the northwest. In the future, it will be necessary to focus on the characteristics of the basis-driver-goal indices and the nine related second-level indices of each URI type to strengthen the strengths and compensate for the weaknesses to further realize national URI development. This study will provide a scientific reference for the effective implementation of rural revitalization and regional coordinated development strategies.

In limited geographical space, improving urban land use efficiency (ULUE) can help cities achieve goals related to sustainable land use. In the era of regional economic integration, the interaction between cities has increased, affecting the urban land use within regions. In this way, regional economic integration has a significant impact on ULUE. However, previous works have overlooked the fact that economies with different urban scales have different levels of attractiveness to factors, which renders regional factor flow unidirectional. By strengthening the one-way flow of regional factors, regional economic integration has different impacts on different cities' ULUEs. In order to bridge these gaps, we divided the 29 cities in the Yangtze River Delta into two types by urban scale, and discussed the impact of government integration strategies with the help of the two-stage least squares method (2SLS). Empirical results show that regional economic integration can significantly increase ULUE. The ULUE in large cities has been improved considering scale and technology, while those in small cities have only been improved with respect to technology. It was also found that governments' strategies can promote economic integration. This shows that the government should treat regional integration as a strategic goal, guide cities at all levels to actively participate in it and make efforts to achieve high-quality coordinated development.

The global urbanization has produced a number of metropolises with complex urban spatial structures. Compared with monocentric cities, these metropolises typically have multiple urban centers/subcenters (UCSs). The formation and development of UCSs is driven by physical, economic and human-activity-related factors. The planning of UCSs can significantly affect the future development of a city. Considerable research has been conducted to investigate the different morphologies and functions of UCSs. Mixed findings have been reported for the identification of UCSs, which is mainly due to the ambiguity of their conceptualizations, variety of data types, different spatial scales, and diverse identification methods. Therefore, existing approaches must be evaluated to clarify their use in different social, economic and environmental contexts. In this study, we conducted a systematic literature review of 70 journal papers published from 1990 to 2020 with respect to the concepts, data, analytical units, and methods used to identify UCSs. By comparing their strengths and weaknesses, the critical issues of these methodological frameworks are identified. The findings suggest that the preferred path for identifying UCSs is one that is objective, context-appropriate, theoretically supported, and based on data.

In the last decade, the peri-urbanization literature has attracted a lot of attention and many scholars have tried to examine these areas from different dimensions, leading to a comprehensive understanding of peri-urban areas. However, a review of domains, approaches, methods and indicators associated with peri-urbanization has received less attention. To this end, the current paper seeks to review them to fill out the gap in the field of researches related to peri-urban areas. The results reveal two thematic domains of peri-urban changes and peri-urban guidance. The methodological approaches were divided into three objective, subjective and pragmatic. Methods were analyzed under the subheadings of quantitative, qualitative and mixed and indicators were categorized in the form of procedural and substantive indicators. These categories form the methodological framework of peri-urbanization literature, leading to an increase in scientific awareness, understanding, supporting and validating of results.

The innovation system of a makerspace needs to be studied from the scalable perspective. Based on an analytical framework, this research examines the endogenous and regional factors that have shaped the innovation system of Dream Town, a government-cultivated makerspace in a characteristic town of Hangzhou, China. Employed a qualitative method, this research finds that Dream Town's innovation system has been co-driven by the endogenous factors (i.e., innovation place, institution and policy, capital supports, and entrepreneurial service system) and the regional factors (i.e., human resources, university and research institutes, industrial structure, and entrepreneurial culture). This research advances our understanding of the factors behind innovation and the ways in which those factors interact to create makerspaces in the Chinese context.

As an island with a colonial urbanscape, Gulangyu (located off the coast of Xiamen, a city in Fujian Province in southern China) has been deteriorating into a touristic ‘thematic park’ since the last decade, resulting in a decrease of its original inhabitants and habitability conditions. Inspired by Italian lessons of various and evolved interpretations of the typo-morphological approach, this paper explores the possible interpretations and implications in Gulangyu in a two-pronged project: (1) by ‘systems’-four local characterized systems related to the specific physical urbanscape and matching practices of uses; and (2) by ‘parts’-four typical featured areas with respective typo-morphological features and facing crucial challenges. This provides a deep understanding of the island's situation and further develops and coordinates a specific framework of strategies for solving its distinctive problems. In particular, it helps in seeking to balance its preserved historic heritage, improvement of the local built-environment to meet contemporary needs and the development of a tourist economy - an urgent and salient task on the urban agendas of historic areas worldwide. As one of the first studies of the Italian typo-morphological approach in historic areas of China, this paper also demonstrates the notable possibility that such European, or more precisely, Italian ways may be practiced in the Chinese context, which may inspire further research and practices in China and beyond.

There has been a widespread critique of the relevance of traditional forms of spatial planning for African cities, and a search for alternative approaches, including strategic spatial planning. However there are debates over whether it is effective and appropriate. This paper explores how strategic spatial planning has influenced growth on the urban periphery of one South African city-region: the northern corridor of the eThekwini (Durban) metropolitan municipality, and the adjacent KwaDukuza municipality. Forms of strategic spatial planning have been underway there for close to 30 years, enabling a relatively long-term view of its influence. In contrast to assumptions that planning is able to direct growth in ways assumed by master planning, or that it is entirely ineffective, the paper shows the complex and varying ways in which planning has shaped growth, intersecting with other drivers of development, and processes of change.

The construction of a spatial planning system has been identified as one of the top national agenda items in China. Several pilot cities have been put in place to experiment on “Integration of Multi-Planning” (IOMP) and explore the integration mechanism of different planning to provide practical support for spatial planning system reform. After outlining existing planning series and their relations in China, this article systematically expounds on the spatial planning disputes among Chinese departments, shows the dilemma of mismatch in planning, and, under the guidance of synergy theory, builds the spatial planning system of “unified planning” to develop common interests within the area, using Yulin City in Shaanxi Province as an example. Findings are drawn from reviewing government policies, analyzing socioeconomic and land use data, and discussing intrinsic issues before propositions are designed.

Urban studies attempt to identify the geographic areas with restricted access to healthy and affordable foods (defined as food deserts in the literature). While prior publications have reported the socioeconomic disparities in healthy food accessibility, little evidence has been released from developing countries, especially in China. This paper proposes a geo-big data approach to measuring transit-varying healthy food accessibility and applies it to identify the food deserts within Shenzhen, China. In particular, we develop a crawling tool to harvest the daily travel time from each community (8117) to each healthy food store (102) from the Baidu Map under four transport modes (walking, public transit, private car, and bicycle) during 17:30–20:30 in June 2016. Based on the travel time calculations, we develop four travel time indicators to measure the healthy food accessibility: the minimum, the maximum, the weighted average, and the standard deviation. Results show that the four accessibility indicators generate different estimations and the nearest service (minimum time) alone fails to reflect the multidimensional nature of healthy food accessibility. The communities within Shenzhen present quite different typology with respect to healthy food accessibility under different transport modes. Multilevel additive regression is further applied to examine the associations between healthy food accessibility and nested socioeconomic characteristics at two geographic levels (community and district). We discover that the associations are divergent with transport modes and with geographic levels. More specifically, significant social equalities in healthy food accessibility are identified via walking, public transit, and bicycle in Shenzhen. Based on the associations, we finally map the food deserts and propose corresponding planning strategies. The methods demonstrated in this study should offer deeper spatial insights into intra-urban foodscapes and provide more nuanced understanding of food deserts in urban settings of developing countries.

The touristic movement has been focused generally while the spatial mobility of the tourism workforce was overlooked. To make up this research gap, the paper conducted in-depth interviews, questionnaire survey, and nonparticipatory observations with rural tourism employees at Baisha village in Zhejiang province, east China. It sought to analyze the demographic characteristics and explore the spatial mobility pattern of the tourism workforce. Although rural tourism plays an important role in job promotion in the study area, tourism employment was still partial to male, young, and low-skilled workforce, and its performance was overestimated in Chinese practice. Evidence on the watershed distance (12–20 km) of their spatial mobility was found based on the empirical analysis and statistics. Then, Push and Pull Model (PPM) was introduced to illustrate the mechanism behind this spatial mobility pattern. The Spatial Enclosure Effect was put up to deeply understand the spatial finiteness of rural tourism employment promotion, in order to help local make scientific decision on rural tourism. Finally, enlightenments of those findings were discussed under the backgrounds of rural revitalization program to improve the efficiency of rural tourism development in China. And applicability and limitation were also discussed deeply.

Rural space development and value distribution are the material basis for sustainable rural development. Rural development problems in China's farming areas relate to limited space, unclear ownership, inefficient organization. Rural spatial governance takes material space and the spatial relationship as governance objects, combining the fair distribution of space with the participation of multi-stakeholders in rural development. This paper examines “matter–organization–ownership” governance path for rural areas, analyzing the efficiency of spatial governance, and investigating the “population, land, industry, and urban–rural relationship” transformation mechanism needed for rural development. We selected Xiangbu Village, a typical farming village, for empirical research to verify the internal relationship between spatial governance and rural development. Xiangbu Village has significantly improved its rural collective organization, public service ability, space asset value, and other aspects through multi-scale and multi-means governance paths. In Xiangbu Village, collective power and spatial governance reconstructed the multi-stakeholder structure of the village, transforming the spatial connection from weak to strong and improving the spatial and overall benefit structure. The process of rural spatial governance involving multi-stakeholders has promoted individuals' land rights claims, the participation of multi-stakeholders, and the will to return to start businesses in Xiangbu Village. The space rights reorganization process of public spatial governance in Xiangbu Village provided the economic, organizational, and material space foundation for industrial development. While spatial governance brings opportunities for village development, it also brings risks. The collective power supervision and restraint mechanisms are imperfect, and problems with the participation and coordination of the ternary forces of government, market, and society still need an urgent solution.

Social connections are the consequences and causes of rural settlement distribution. Although numerous studies have examined rural restructuring, the relationship between social connections and rural restructuring has been neglected. This study proposed a novel restructuring method of rural settlement based on an analysis of inter-village social connections that include both spatial and non-spatial connections. A questionnaire survey was conducted from a sample comprising 925 people from Chengui Township in Hubei Province, Central China. The characteristics of the social networks of the residents were analyzed using a node degree and node symmetry index (NSI), and the causes of network formations were analyzed according to the connection types of the rural residents. Both consolidated settlements and relocation areas were identified using a measurement of ideal radius based on social connection analysis. Spatial connection orientation, non-spatial orientation and ideal radius orientation were proposed to guide rural settlement restructuring. The results indicated that the hierarchy of village-town systems can be effectively identified by the features of social connection networks. Social connection strength is an important guiding factor for rural reconstruction. This study puts forward a new view of rural settlement reconstruction and aids in our understanding of both the changing mechanism of rural settlement and the relationship between social connections and rural settlement reconstruction.

Societies are committing themselves to sustainable development by attempting to improve environmental quality, social equity, and economic welfare. As such, there continues a plea for holistic development assessment across scales; however there remains no ideal technique for achieving sustainability on neither regional nor local scale. This paper approaches this problem by constructing a multi-metric assessment system for evaluating development patterns across the Republic of Moldova. The objectives of this study were: (1) to produce a local multi-metric index that captures the three major dimensions of sustainable development for Moldova; (2) to quantitatively evaluate the interrelatedness of sub-metrics used for creating the local composite index of sustainable development; and (3) to visualize and interpret spatial patterns of sustainable development across Moldova. A local sustainable development index (LSDI) was produced using household and property composition indicators from a 2005 demographic and health survey for the Republic of Moldova. Total sample size and aggregated spatial reference was 11,066 households and 399 geographic locations, respectively. The LSDI used a 15 sub-metric optimum, equal weighting, 1–5 ordinal scale standardization, and additive construction. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient analysis was used to evaluate sub-metric quantitative relationships, and local Moran's I -test to interpret geographic patterns of sustainable development. Results revealed that a wealth sub-index had greatest collinearity with other sub-metrics. Geographically, Moldova's improved sustainability levels were found in large urban areas, suggesting needed prioritization of development resources to the hinterland. For regional sustainable development assessments, this approach provides the transferability to other locally referenced datasets throughout the world.

Industrial parks have been tested in various regions around the world, in attempt to foster innovation and fuel economic growth. Despite the importance of industry co-agglomerations in regional growth, few studies examine them in regional geographic space. This paper combines exploratory spatial data analysis and input–output method to explore the spatial pattern of key industrial co-agglomerations in Beijing, which is illustrated by location, function, frequency, spatial hierarchy and spacing. The results contribute to linking abstract economic and actual geographical spaces in urban and regional growth, enabling urban and regional planners to judge and evaluate planning initiatives before and after implementation. The failure of sub-center plans and risks of industrial parks schemes in Beijing are addressed. By considering industrial input–output relations including environmental and human resources, urban planners can optimize the development of such co-agglomerations to foster sustainable urban development.

According to the theory of search space, Internet channel can provide considerably more housing information than traditional channel do, thereby reducing the limitations of previous houses and workplaces to expand search space in moving processes. However, few empirical studies have examined the specific relationships among information channels, search space and final moving space. In this study, we adopted Nanjing in China as a case study and applied multinomial logistic regression to confirm that Internet channel users are more likely to move to areas far away from their previous houses with longer moving distance compared with traditional channel users, but no significant tendency can be found about relationships between information channels and commuting distance. Therefore, usage of Internet channel in Nanjing leaded to a considerable decentralisation of residential space, especially increasing relocations from city centre to suburban areas to stimulate urban expansion. We also propose some suggestions for controlling disorderly urban sprawl in the information era, research limitations and future research directions.

This paper illustrates needs for revisions on educational land use policy in developing cities. It discusses the importance of educational spaces when they give services to many people and cover co ...

China is transitioning from a traditional agrarian society into a modern industrial urban society. The main objective of this study is to establish a simple index to characterize the integrated transformation in a fixed area during China's process of urbanization and industrialization. This research focuses on key aspects of the urban rural integration that is occurring land usage, production efficiencies, employment, and household registration structures to establish a "Relative Rurality Index" (RRI). It assesses these measures in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area of Chongqing (TGRAC). This index is not used to identify absolute urban or rural zones spatially, but to represent the gradients between the min a fixed area. RRI evaluations conducted in 2000 and 2010 indicate that a decade of development has led to an across-the-board decline in rurality in all TGRAC counties. Imbalances in area developments have also increased, with a clear rurality spatial differential, and basic correspondence between the spatial distribution of rurality and the urbanization of strategic deployments. Policy and non-Linear regression analyses show that changes in the rurality of the TGRAC are consistent with the derivative of the central government's strategic programs and policies. In short, the urban rural system in the TGRAC has undergone deep and lasting change. The results of this study show that the rurality characterized by RRI is both more accurate and comprehensive than the urbanization level presented in government statistics. Based on an in-depth analysis of the urban rural systems, this study provides an effective framework for policy-making that will support healthy urbanization and industrialization in China. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Fil: Niembro, Andrés A. Universidad Nacional de Río Negro. Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Territorio, Economía y Sociedad (CIETES). Río Negro, Argentina. Fil: Guevara, Tomás Alejandro. National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET). Buenos Aires, Argentina Fil: Cavanagh, Eugenia. Universidad Nacional de Río Negro. Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Territorio, Economía y Sociedad (CIETES). Río Negro, Argentina. Fil: Cavanagh, Eugenia. National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET). Buenos Aires, Argentina Fil: Guevara, Tomás Alejandro. Universidad Nacional de Río Negro. Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Territorio, Economía y Sociedad (CIETES). Río Negro, Argentina. The problem of urban segregation has been extensively studied among developed and developing countries. However, in Latin America this phenomenon presents some particularities, such as the role of access to urban infrastructure. Based on data from the latest population census and multivariate analysis techniques, we provide a neighborhood typology for Bariloche, Argentina, which, among other things, enables us to reveal a complex relationship between the socioeconomic level of the population, its residential location, and infrastructure availability. Unlike previous research on Latin American cities, in this case the lowest correlation between these issues seems to indicate that, although urban infrastructure and equipment are important to address urban segregation, public policies should not be limited to only such dimensions. El problema de la segregación urbana se ha estudiado ampliamente entre los países desarrollados y en desarrollo. Sin embargo, en América Latina este fenómeno presenta algunas particularidades, como el rol del acceso a la infraestructura urbana. Con base en datos del último censo de población y técnicas de análisis multivariante, brindamos una tipología de barrios para Bariloche, Argentina, que, entre otras cosas, nos permite revelar una relación compleja entre el nivel socioeconómico de la población, su ubicación residencial e infraestructura. disponibilidad. A diferencia de investigaciones anteriores sobre ciudades latinoamericanas, en este caso la correlación más baja entre estos temas parece indicar que, si bien la infraestructura y el equipamiento urbanos son importantes para abordar la segregación urbana, las políticas públicas no deben limitarse solo a esas dimensiones

Transit Oriented Development (TOD), as a widely practiced planning strategy toward urban sustainability, commonly refers to the integration of transport and land use in the form of an integrated transit station area surrounded by compact urban development and high-quality walkable environment. Although policymakers are very enthusiastic about the potential of TOD in boosting the development of real estate market and livable neighborhoods, how TOD characteristics affect housing rental prices has not well been gauged with empirical data. Taking advantage of online housing platforms, this paper attempts to fill this gap through explicitly unraveling the impact of TOD on housing rental prices across five major Chinese megacities (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Wuhan). We first propose a conceptual framework to explain why and how TOD impacts housing rental prices. TODs are then delineated in the five megacities and T-test confirms that TOD housing properties present significant higher rental prices than non-TOD ones. Spatial hedonic modeling is employed to identify the relationship between TOD characteristics (e.g., metro station, neighborhood and synergy) and housing rental prices in each megacity, and the variable decomposition is further utilized to quantify their relative contribution. Regardless the variations among the five megacities, it is discovered that TOD characteristics generally account for 10%–20% of the housing rental prices and the TOD neighborhood presents the highest relative contribution. The synergy between the metro station and the neighborhood also plays an essential role. Metro station type rather than metro station proximity acts as a significant exploratory variable. These findings foreground that the essence of TOD lies in high-quality urban (neighborhood) development, which are often overlooked in previous studies that overemphasize the importance of “transit” (station) itself. Based on the identified TOD-generated housing rental premiums, we offer five recommendations for TOD practices to be integrated into China's territorial spatial planning. This study renews our understanding of the outcomes of TOD both conceptually and methodologically.

The rising pace of urbanization may lead to two different kinds of impacts i.e., i) its detrimental pressure on urban amenities and facilities and ii) associated opportunities for collective growth and development for better economic prosperities in urban areas. The coexistence of the twin but contradictory scenarios are beginning to attract researchers to search for a reconciliation and seek a complementary viewpoint of looking at development comprehensively within urban areas, especially a metropolitan urban agglomeration (MUA). The research develops a methodology to assess livability potential based on Integrated Urban Geographic Factors (IUGFs). Focussing on Kolkata Urban Agglomeration (KUA), data has been obtained from 454 residents’. At the initial part of the methodology, six IUGFs has been initiated from a gamut of 34 variables based on Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). To complete the methodology, the research has also earmarked the utility of the Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR) model to best understand the significance and the degree of impacts of initiated IUGFs of livability potential within KUA. The result shows that positive and favorable socio-cultural factors stand over economic factors to enhance KUA as more livable and habitable MUA.

The improvement of rural human settlements is an important task in the Rural Revitalisation strategy in China. Determining the quality and spatial distribution of rural human settlements and making strategies according to local conditions are conductive to the construction of beautiful rural in China. On the basis of existing theories and research on rural human settlements, this paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework of rural human settlements that focuses on infrastructure, public services, quality of life, living standards and environmental health. Entropy method and cluster analysis are used to analyse the quality of rural human settlements and to divide regions among 31 provinces in China. The main conclusions are as follows: (i) China can be divided into four quadrants. Regions with high qualities are mainly concentrated in the first quadrant. The second and third quadrants score the lowest. The quality of rural human settlements in sub-dimensions shows disequilibrium and the quality of life is low compared with other four dimensions. (ii) The 31 provinces can be divided into five categories: demonstration regions, regions with potentials for development, regions with weak points, regions of satisfying basic needs, and backward regions. (iii) Rural human settlements is a large complex system, whose quality is closely related to the conditions of regional development. Long-term follow-up investigation should be the focus of future research. Findings provide scientific guidance for the optimization and improvement mechanism of rural human settlements and rural revitalisation.

The interconnections between rural and urban areas have been a major topic of discussion among scholars and policy makers for decades. While both rural and urban areas depend on each other for critical services, rural areas, especially in the developing countries, are often under-represented in policy and essential service provisions. Though widely studied from different perspectives across the globe, the academic landscape of rural-urban nexus is poorly characterized. This study aims to characterize the field, employing bibliometric analysis. Bibliometric is applied because it allows obtaining useful quantitative overview of the evolution of an academic field. The study aims to address six important questions: (1) how has scholarship evolved over the past three decades in this subfield of rural-urban studies? (2) which countries are at the forefront of knowledge production in the subfield? (3) what are the leading productive institutions in the world? (4) where are scholars publishing their works? (5) who are the leading authors in the field? and (6) are there any major areas where scholars have been focusing on over the last three decades? Results show that rural-urban scholarship has grown exponentially over the studied period (1990–2018). The United States has been a major single player in publication records, productive authors, international collaboration and institutional contribution. Further, research in the domain of rural-urban nexus can be categorized into six major clusters; (1) socioeconomic inequalities, (2) livelihood, (3) migration, (4) consumption and poverty, (5) biodiversity and conservation, and (6) connectivity and integration. Given the dearth of contribution in the developing world, the study argued that the subfield of rural-urban scholarship is largely under the hegemony of global north scholars. Potential research areas and study weaknesses are discussed.

Polycentrism has gradually become a newly emergent dimension of global urbanization. Many countries worldwide have tailored plans suited to functional polycentricity, in light of the prevalent “ghost cities” or “empty towns” as lessons from the morphologically polycentric development practices. However, the subject of defining and measuring functional polycentricity is still in an initial development phase, both in theory and in methodology. This paper first establishes a general theoretical framework for understanding functional polycentricity from the lens of interactive human mobility among spatial units. Then, a new approach is proposed to identify and measure urban functional polycentricity from a multiscale perspective and further applied to the case of Shanghai, China. More specifically, the pick-up and drop-off points from taxi GPS data are used to examine the linkages among different urban units across various scales (e.g., census tract, 3000-m grid, 5000-m grid, and community). Complex network modeling, together with the sensitivity analysis, is further employed to identify the centers according to the spatial importance of each unit. The results show that (1) the approach proposed can effectively identify functional centers within urban setting; (2) an obvious polycentric structure exists in Shanghai and is sensitive to scale effects; (3) the estimates are more accurate and precise with the shrink of analysis unit size from community level to census tract level; and (4) under the same spatial scale, the grid-based analysis produces a more elaborated polycentric pattern compared with the traditional administration-based analysis. Finally, scale-dependent differences between morphological and functional polycentricity are distinguished for providing implications for urban planning. Our study is believed to renew the knowledge of polycentricity conceptualization.

Connection among cities is currently a central issue in regional development. However, relatively few studies have investigated the multi-scale characteristics of inter-city connection and its spatial implications for concrete city system planning. This paper adopts a multi-scalar analytical framework from the perspective of inter-town networks to reexamine this issue. Using 1034 towns in Hubei Province in China as the case-study area, this paper constructs a Hubei Province inter-town network (HBTN) through the radiation model and spatial accessibility and subsequently analyzes the network structure at the macro, medium and micro levels. Corresponding practical policies are provided based on the findings. The results are highlighted below: (1) The HBTN exhibits scale-free and small-world mixing properties; (2) The modular structure of HBTN is apparent. Inter-module connections in the east, central, and west present star-shape, web-like, and loose characteristics, respectively; the corresponding strategies are coordinated development, long-term cooperation and transportation improvement; (3) Five roles of towns were identified in the HBTN. Linking provincial hubs is an effective solution for different modules to achieve powerful alliances. Jingmen, Xiangyang, and Yichang should transform their roles to connector hubs to improve integrative development. This study validated the applicability of the network analysis method to concrete city system planning. The results could help us to assist and optimize management efforts for regional development.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the world has experienced rapid urbanization and slum proliferation. Slum residents form a significant portion of urban populations and contribute to the development of cities. However, due to their highly concentrated consumption and waste production patterns, slums endure and exacerbate, among other things, environmental degradation. To date, our understanding of slums in Indian cities has been primarily based on census data and evidence from remote sensing images. These data do not yet provide spatial slum dynamics over time and are limited to static and statistical representation. In addition to the obsolescence of spatial data, the non-availability of consistent socio-economic data leads to data integration problems. Therefore, new approaches that consider the scarcity of data and the choice of analytical techniques are needed; planners without advanced technical training should also be able to easily apply these approaches. This study provides a comprehensive approach to examine the urban transformation of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT-Delhi), India, from 1971 to 2011. Combining data from multi-temporal remote sensing images, census population statistics, slum enumeration and the provision of essential services, these investigations reveal a previously undocumented rapid increase in built-up areas outside municipal boundaries. The findings confirm the spatial shift of slums from the city center towards the periphery. The analysis provides a revealing insight: the emergence and growth of slums are outcomes of the prevailing urban planning environment, the limited success of adopted policies and the government's inability to foster growth.

The rapid population growth has outpaced the planning interventions in most large Indian cities resulting into unplanned, leapfrogged physical development and considerable transport challenges for intra-city and regional traffic. As an afterthought, these concerns have been addressed by formulation of spatial development strategies to guide rapid urban expansion creating planned real estate development opportunities, and to ease regional traffic movements. This paper is based on two unique case studies of regional transportation corridors developed in the fringe areas of rapidly growing mega cities – Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Global Corridor (KMPGC) in the national capital region of Delhi (16 million people and the largest city in India) and Sardar Patel Ring Road (SPRR) in the City of Ahmadabad, India (6 million people and the seventh largest city in India). Both the cases employed unique land development strategies to achieve the larger public purpose while creating planned land and real estate development opportunities. The KMPGC Delhi case employed compulsory purchase for reserving 325-foot wide right-of-way (ROW) and created multiple economic nodes as theme cities, strategically located along its 135 km (84 miles) corridor. While, the case of SPRR Ahmadabad employed land readjustment (LR) technique for reserving 76 km (47 miles) long and 200-foot wide ROW of a regional ring road. Using these two cases, this paper explains both types of land development processes and the financing models involved in these cases, and compares benefits and constraints of compulsory purchase and LR technique, especially in context of regional level real estate and economic development opportunities via new real estate markets as spatial corridors and economic nodes. The paper finally recommends a new hybrid model – a strategy for rapidly growing cities, where both models can be used in a hybrid form to achieve regional level public asset, create real estate market opportunities in fast growing fringe areas and achieve a planned development.

Change in the socio-economic status of urban neighbourhoods is a complex phenomenon with multiple space, time, and attribute dimensions. The objective of this research was to explore the use of a Self-Organizing Map (SOM) to visualize patterns of urban social change. In a case study, we collected, organized, and joined data from the 1996, 2001, and 2006 Canadian Census for the City of Toronto. Urban neighbourhoods were represented by Census tracts. The SOM translates multi-dimensional data into two-dimensional graphical patterns of neighbourhood socio-economic status. These were associated with patterns in geographic space. Spatio-temporal change was represented by trajectories in the SOM. The study identified trends of decreasing neighbourhood diversity and shifts in the dynamics of urban social change in Toronto. The proposed methodology could assist with strategic planning of urban development and efficient resource allocation that fits with local needs.

The practices and instruments of urban governance are rapidly changing in Delhi, a metropolitan area of 24 million inhabitants characterized by strong socio-economic inequalities. The Delhi metro megaproject and its financing mechanism through land value capture are the prism through which this paper analyses governance patterns at different scales. This model has led to the production of mixed-use spaces in the heart of the city, allowing for a spatial cohabitation of transport functions as well as residential, commercial, and economic uses, following a pattern that has been identified as one of the defining features of a 'new generation of megaprojects' (Diaz Orueta & Fainstein, 2009). It argues that although there has been significant institutional change, notably the entry of private sector actors in mega infrastructure development, careful analysis of the modalities of this mechanism reveal important aspects of continuity including the pre-eminence of techno-scientific planning, minimal stakeholder consultation and conflicts in the public sphere. The Delhi metro case will be situated within the larger Indian context, which has been marked since the 2000s by the emergence of city-centric growth strategies with public investments concentrated in large cities often in the form of public-private partnerships (Kennedy & Zerah, 2008), and the importation and adaptation of international models.

Mega-projects aimed at enhancing urban economic infrastructure have been widely recognised as a feature of cities in which influential actors are eager to encourage economic growth. They have also been described as being central in influencing physical patterns of city growth through their direct and indirect impacts on land-uses. Whilst such initiatives are not necessarily new, it has been noted in more recent urban development experiences that these projects tend to involve crafting highly complex, mixed-use environments through a variety of forms of public-private collaboration. Furthermore, they are promoted not only in instrumental terms as facilities or infrastructure to serve a need of a particular economic process, but are also often packaged and motivated as comprehensive urban developments that can reposition the image of cities in a highly competitive global investment environment. Such processes are both influenced by and, in turn, influence multi-scalar governance processes and practices, both in the planning and motivating projects, as well as in their operations. The new King Shaka International Airport (KSIA) and Dube TradePort (DTP), located some 35 km north from the City of Durban in South Africa, were projects developed with the intention of replacing an apparently obsolete facility so as to enable the region to attract more international aviation links that could, in turn, support tourism and exports. Based on analysis of documents and a range of stakeholder interviews, the paper shows how the development of the facilities and the associated impacts, from the shaping of space to meeting of operational targets, have been influenced by and also influenced the character of governance arrangements.

This paper examines and compares the processes, methodologies and resulting sets of indicators for urban sustainability carried out in three of Asia's developing countries; Malaysia, Taiwan and China. The paper analytically discusses the challenges of developing urban sustainability indicators among the developing countries. The comparison reveals the urban indicators development's processes, contents and outcomes and whether the resulting set of urban indicators is operational and has changed the way things were.

Urban sprawl has become an increasing concern in Europe, given the abandonment of rural areas and loss of natural landscapes. In southern Europe remarkable changes have been witnessed in the last few decades concerning land-use and socio-economic growth. Much of this change has had an impact on the morphology of urban footprints. While urban growth and sprawl are conceptually very different, the latter has had an unprecedented impact on the landscape and on the existing environmental systems. This paper sets out to analyse urban sprawl on the basis of the concepts of gravitational theory. This paper brings about a convergence of the spatial sciences within the scope of analysis of theoretical physics, offering a definition of urban sprawl applied in a novel context to assess urban sprawl. Methodologically, we propose to measure acceleration a as the amount of urban change witnessed in urban land-use during a given time t, affecting the regional dynamic of intra-city growth. The concept of a gravitational force F is then discussed in function of its relation to the spatial proximity of the main cities in Veneto in Italy. We provide a novel approach, which improves our quantitative understanding of urbanization between city cores, and offers a gravitational regional system, driven by laws of acceleration and forces governing the structure of urban change. This approach allows us to calculate a city mass m, which permits us to identify, using the dataset of CORINE Land Cover Survey between 2000 and 2006, the cities which will be responsible for future urban sprawl, and to quantify this phenomenon. Our results show that Verona, Padua and Trevisso generate per mass the urban sprawl, which is then validated by defining a buffer that assesses this change. In this sense, we offer a new interpretation of urban regional change in land use, and a spatial model which can efficiently assess urban areas with regard to urban sprawl, by adding geographical capabilities to regional science and classical mechanics. In addition, our work introduces a new process in describing regional urban interactions from a spatial perspective.

Many historical cities in China are facing exceptional pressures for redevelopment and other changes because of the growth of the market-oriented economy over the past three to four decades. Urban conservation in China, which is influenced by Western experiences, has its own characteristics. Both its theory and practice reflect the distinctive philosophical and cultural traditions and the political-economic conditions of the country. The retrospect development of urban conservation in China, from an international comparative perspective, aims to generate a more systematic and critical understanding of the differences and links between urban conservation in China and that being in the West. Although considerable effort has been devoted to reconciling authentic conservation and the demands for growth in China, a more adaptable and historically sensitive framework for future urban change is slow to develop. Focusing on UNESCO's historic urban landscape recommendation and issues over its recent implementation in China, the paper intends to form a basis for future research, in which the theoretical, institutional, and practical aspects of urban conservation can be further improved, both in China and international context.

Based on the Web of Science core collection database, this paper retrieves 1273 research papers on urban expansion published during the period of 1990–2019. Thematic evolutionary analysis, cluster analysis and SciMAT were used to identify the evolutionary path of urban expansion research. The results show that (1) in the past 20 years, the study of urban expansion has shown an upward trend. After 2013, it became a hot topic in academic research, and the number of documents increased sharply. (2) The themes of urban expansion research have mainly focuses on policy, landscape, land-use change, built-up environment and so on. Scholars from various fields have actively participated in the research, and the research results have been fruitful. (3) The interdisciplinary nature of the discipline determines that the research on urban expansion presents great differences in perspectives, scales, methods, and data. (4) The urban expansion field presents eight evolutionary paths in three research directions. The policy research and scale effect research of urban expansion represent the main thread of knowledge and will continue to be a research hotspot. The landscape ecology research of urban expansion has attracted much attention, and its research status has gradually increased, making it a research direction with the potential for development in this field. Moreover, there are regional differences in the thematic evolution paths between advanced and developing countries. Finally, the paper argues that scale issues, strengthening communication and integration within and between disciplines, introduction of new theories and methods, and model coupling will become the research directions that should be focused on in the future of urban expansion.

A number of informal areas in Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, South Africa have experienced rapid expansion over the past decade. Census data available for these areas is outdated and does not provide enough information for local authorities to plan tasks such as service delivery management and resource allocation. In this study, a GIS based demographic study of informal settlements within Nelson Mandela Bay was undertaken. The study aimed to significantly improve the collection, analysis, interpretation, display and management of demographic survey data and provide the accurate and necessary updates required between census collections. Data relating to informal settlements were captured from 1996 aerial photographs and 2007 satellite imagery, and demographic data were collected from field surveys. Specific demographic trends identified through spatial analyses included a 71% and 109% decline and increase in informal and formal dwellings respectively. A significant increase in backyard shacks paradoxically came with the development of many formal structures in settlements. The capture and collection of data at household level and creation of customized boundaries for informal settlements facilitated analyses independent of any fixed set of areal units. The study concluded that GIS based demographic studies are vital for providing the necessary updates to decennial censuses for municipalities, particularly in urban environments of developing countries.

The paper reports on a research study undertaken on the differentiation of green building certification systems at an international, national and local level. Through a cross comparison, authors are able to explain the differences by the contextualism theory which could be traced back to the fundamental divergence on lifestyles, preferences, urban morphology besides climatic variations. The discussion is derived from a study of three green rating systems representing international, national and local systems with reference to intentions, mechanisms and benchmarks to facilitate objective assessments. For the case of Hong Kong, local challenges are identified and compared with counterparts at a national level. Two residential projects having certified by the ‘modified, localized’ national system is selected for a case study for synopsis with a view to explain the cause and effect of transferability versus non-transferability of assessment credits and protocols. Introducing and applying national and international systems to a local context can detect flaws in local design practices that may be ignored in the local rating system., Highlights • Green building rating systems are compared. • Revision and adaptation are made to address local contexts and challenges. • Two residential projects are certified to examine the revision and adaptation. • How to contextualize green building rating systems is summarized.

The theory of urban residential polarization assumes that the urban housing market is not a monolithic phenomenon but a framework that displays wide variations in quality, quantity and value. As a city splits into different neighbourhoods, so also the residential quality differs. The types of dwellings available to urban households often reflect in their neighbourhood and structural features. This study therefore examines the importance of the neighbourhood and dwelling features accompanying housing choices of residents within three residential neighbourhoods – the Low, the Medium and the High residential density areas – of Lagos Metropolitan areas using Discrete Choice Model. Data were collected through an extensive housing survey of residences in 56 wards within 12 administrative units in Lagos megacity. Descriptive and inferential analytical statistics were used to render explanations for the variations in residential quality variables and choices across the study area. Findings evinced a preponderance of multifamily units in the high density area, as against flat and duplex housing units in the medium and low density areas of the city. The logit analysis of home types indicated significant influence of dwelling quality on home choices in the three residential neighbourhoods of Lagos. Practical and policy implications of these findings to urban housing development are explicitly given.

The multifunctionality of the suburbs of mega-cities has gained increasing attention among scholars and practitioners in the last few years, for its higher demand and impact on the urban growth poles. This study aims to develop a conceptual model of multifunctional development in urban suburbs and provide a quantitative indicator system at village level to explain the relationships among different rural functions under the influence of urbanization. The conceptual model advances the theoretical discussion on rural multifunctionality from agriculture land to urban suburbs. By analyzing 160 villages of Qingpu District in Shanghai, this study shows that the suburbs have developed their regional multifunctional characteristics with significant spatial differences and conflicts among functions. Spatial location and village committee play an essential role in rural multifunctional development. We suggest that rural development should focus on the dominant function and the reduction of low-efficiency industrial land.

In this study, initially, the main urban elements in the physical structure of traditional Iranian cities, the characteristics of those elements, and their functions are investigated to improve urban livability with regard to religious, economic, residential, public, political and administrative spaces. Then, these functions are compared with those of the main elements in the contemporary cities of Iran, and their difference is detected. This study also conclude by emphasizing that urban planners and designer should consider the evolution of the city in the period of time and strategies learned from the past should be considered at the time of urban planners and designer. Therefore, through the investigation of the elements constituting traditional Islamic cities in Iran and the maintenance of these elements in the space of current cities, it is possible to find ways to make the environment be responsive to contemporary needs while it keeps its continuity and integrity with the historical structure and spaces.

The index of multiple deprivations (IMD) is an established method in western market economies for measuring the level of social disadvantage in small areas so as to allocate public resources and target area-based regeneration policies. The method has seldom been used in emerging economies such as China. This article applies the method to the city of Guangzhou and attempts to develop an index that is suitable to the local context. Using the fifth population census, 13 indicators are selected into 5 domains of deprivation, which are measured in the finest resolution of 1632 residents' committees (RCs). The method is useful to show urban–rural disparity and the extensive distribution of deprived areas in outer suburbs.

International audience; The main question concerns the ways in which knowledge management configurations (KM) within urban governance are being transformed through digitization and spatializing information (GIS). This question fits into broader discussions on how knowledge construction, circulation and utilization can improve competences in local government (efficiency and effectiveness), make urban planning more knowledge-based, and provide greater recognition of citizens' knowledge (accountability). Local governments need such instruments in dealing with increasing complexity and uncertainty in urban development.We examine how uneven patterns of technological change in using ICT and GIS are transforming current local government work processes in terms of efficiency and effectiveness in their outcomes, utilizing empirical data from extended case studies in six medium-sized cities in India, South Africa, Brazil, and Peru, participating in the Chance2Sustain research network. Knowledge management in cities is configured through several dimensions: 1) discourses for digitizing KM in local urban development; 2) actor networks producing socio-spatial knowledge; 3) embedding KM in decision-making processes (power struggles, exclusion); and 4) influences of KM on work practices and interfaces with citizens.The case study results show that 1) KM discourses concerned four issues: strategic urban planning and integrated land use planning; determining geographic boundaries in urban development discourses; streamlining work processes of local governments, and mapping poverty and needs assessments; 2) initiatives mainly link government with the private sector at various scale levels; 3) codified and technical knowledge remains dominant in discussions on urban development; and 4) effects of KM are uneven, but improve work process efficiency, although the interface with citizens remains limited, focusing on middle-class relations to the exclusion of the poor.

Despite the rapid transformation of art villages in Beijing, an understanding of their location dynamics has been lacking. This paper will supply that insight by exploring three interrelated questions: What are the location characteristics of Beijing's art villages? How has economic transformation shaped their location? Is there anything unique about the evolution of Beijing's art villages? Analyses of information gathered through field reconnaissance and secondary sources reveal that these art villages have expanded rapidly in the urban fringe of metropolitan Beijing. Major factors influencing its location and relocation include the cost of rental properties, the quality of the creative environment, attributes of the transitional land and art markets, and public policies for Beijing's metropolitan development. Rapid economic transition and urban growth in China have shaped a trajectory of art village evolvement distinctive from that in Western metropolises. The fate of art villages in Beijing is determined by the transitional characteristics of urban development, art markets and state policies.

This study aims to give a differentiated picture of urban and suburban development regarding demographic and land-use change as major drivers for urban growth. A set of indicators has been selected to analyze and evaluate the dynamics of these drivers and their implications for environmental conditions and the quality of life. The study is exemplified by the Metropolitan Area of Santiago de Chile (MAS). This metropolis is undergoing rapid urban dynamics, like many other Latin American cities, but shows some idiosyncratic features. The results show demographic growth in suburbia, very densely built-up areas in the urban municipalities with the only growth potential in the suburban landscape, as well as environmental implications of flood-hazard zones and public green spaces relevant for both urban and suburban areas. Furthermore, the indicators assessed show that not all suburban areas underlie the same conditions, nor are they similarly developed.