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Rural accessibility can depend mainly on the services and facilities available, as well as the travel options for each group in the settlements. The layout of rural living facilities can be optimized to enhance the rural development and the happiness index of rural residents. The rural accessibility of facilities has gradually received much attention in recent years, since the rural revitalization strategy was launched in China. But, the current evaluation can be limited to a single evaluation object and perspective. Taking the Gao’an City, Yichun City, Jiangxi Province, China, as the study area, the spatial distribution characteristics of rural accessibility were analyzed from the perspectives of “Threshold- Supply and Demand”. An accessibility zoning model was then proposed to determine the driving mechanism and optimization path of rural accessibility using a coupling perspective. Firstly, the accessibility evaluation index system of rural life was constructed by considering four types of facilities: education, medical, commercial and cultural, and sports, together with the needs of rural residents in daily life and the demand for higher facilities and services, as the living standard improved. Secondly, a network data set with the time cost was constructed using the ArcMap network analysis tool in the road network of Gao’an City. The “isochronous analysis method for service demand” was used to obtain the lowest time cost of reaching specific living facilities at any location. The “two-step floating catchment area method” was improved to calculate the accessibility from the supply perspective. In addition, an accessibility zoning model was proposed to identify the four accessibility types using the coupled perspective of “Threshold-Supply and Demand”. There were different spatial distribution characteristics of facilities and settlements in the rural areas from those in cities. Finally, the accessibility model was evaluated on the influencing factors of rural accessibility for the optimal paths and specific measures. The results show that there were some large barriers to rural preschool education, medical treatment for major diseases, logistics, express delivery, and cultural and sports activities from the perspective of the minimum time cost, indicating the significant imbalance between urban and rural development. A relatively balanced regional supply and demand were observed in the education resources and population. The medical facilities presented a higher supply in some township centers than that in urban areas, whereas, there was an outstanding urban bias in the supply of commerce, culture, and sports. Four types (namely high threshold-low supply, high threshold-high supply, low threshold-low supply, low threshold-high supply) of accessible and inaccessible zones were divided in the Gao’an City under the rural accessibility zoning using the coupling perspective. Among them, the rural living accessibility was also influenced by the spatial impedance and supply-demand relationship. Three aspects can also be optimized: the spatial relationship adjustment, living facilities and road construction, and flow of living service elements. Therefore, decision-making can be very necessary to balance rural accessibility from different perspectives. A trade-off strategy between the different zoning and facilities can greatly contribute to optimal rural living and the layout of rural settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human mobility is a cross-disciplinary research hotspot which reflects the complex man-land relationship. Understandings of the intra-urban employment population flow, as an important part of urban group mobility, are crucial for urban planning and traffic forecasting. The common use of location-awareness devices such as mobile phones enables to capture human behavioral data for analyzing intra-urban employment flow. In this paper, we attempt to characterize the employment flow and interpret its formation mechanism using mobile phone data recorded during 30 days (from June 1, 2016 to June 30, 2016) in Wuhan. Considering the spatial distribution of cellular base stations, we divide our study area into grids sized 250 m×250 m. We then adopt approaches to extract daily individual mobility information by identifying positon and duration of stagnations. Next, we propose several rules to infer in which grids people work and reside from individual mobility information we extracted and estimate the job/housing distribution as well as the employment flows between sub-districts. We then build the employment flows network, and methods such as network centrality analysis, network density analysis and community detection are applied to discover the pattern and characteristic of employment flows. Finally, we examine the influence of employment potential, traffic accessibility, spatial proximity, cultural difference and major industry on the size of employment flow between sub-districts and interpret its formation mechanism using logistic regression. The results firstly show that the number of intra-urban employment flow in Wuhan is unevenly distributed as large amounts of employment flow are concentrated in a few sub-districts. Secondly, the employment flows mainly occur in the sub-districts with good spatial proximity. It shows the distribution of the outflow employments decrease gradually as distance and accessibility time increase, and forms several employment communities (such as Hanyang, Wuchang North, Wuchang South, et al.) in the influence of geographical barriers and cultural differences. Thirdly, the employment potential measured by the resident population of the origin sub-districts and the working population of the destination sub-districts is the most important factor to increase the size of employment flow. Rather, cultural differences and poor accessibility hinder employment flow. The result also verifies that differences in major industries affect the employment flow, that commerce and education have a negative effect on the outflow of employments, but the industry attracts employments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]