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Since the first modern shopping centre was built in the United States in the 1920s, shopping centres have gradually become representative patterns of economic growth and consumerism in the United States, and these patterns are now trending globally. Shopping centres have demonstrated tremendous development potential since their initial entry into China in the 1990s. Shanghai is the most economically prosperous city in China, and the development and evolution of its shopping centres reflect the trend in China's commercial real estate development. Therefore, based on the central-place and agglomeration economy theory, this paper quantitatively measures and analyses the spatial gravity, extending direction, agglomeration characteristics and hierarchical structure of Shanghai's shopping centres using GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and spatial analysis. Moreover, this paper analyses the dynamic mechanism of urban development and its patterns of centripetal and centrifugal movement. The results demonstrate the following. (1) The spatial gravity points are located in the districts of Huangpu, Luwan and Xuhui in the city centre and within the inner ring. In addition, there is a trend to be gradually near the middle ring, exhibiting an obvious tendency from the northeast to the southwest. (2) Shopping centres in Shanghai exhibit a clustered distribution in the centres of urban areas, which form numerous business districts that extend in the same direction. (3) The hot spot analysis is a very effective method for identifying the hierarchy of business circles. (4) Planning by the government is the most important external impetus, and commercial agglomeration is the internal force determining the spatial expansion of shopping centres. Additionally, urban transportation patterns have an obvious influence on the spatial morphology of shopping centres. (5) Over the last two decades, the spatial development of Shanghai's shopping centres has reached a balance between the centripetal and centrifugal forces. In other words, we have not observed a tendency towards suburbanization, which indicates that Shanghai's shopping centres are still in the early stages of development. Therefore, future shopping centres may be primarily located in the stretch or peripheral zones of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, macro- and mesoresearches on urban morphology have started, but microscopic morphology of development zones is still a neglected area. In this paper, the GIS spatial analysis method is used to undertake empirical research to reveal the relationship between the morphological characteristics of development zones, land-use intensity, and industrial concentration. The aim is to provide a reference for development zone planning, construction, operation, and management. Results of this study reveal the following: (1) spatial distribution of industrial land in Shanghai is obviously clustered around the Big Hongqiao region; (2) although only one-third of development zones are above the average level of the whole city in land-use intensity, the disparity among development zones is still marked, especially between national-level and municipal-level development zones; (3) compactness and radial index have a strong positive correlation with the land development ratio, but local integration has a negative correlation with the index of land use intensity; (4) an incongruous trend exists between industrial concentration and the compact construction of development zones; and (5) transport accessibility is not a major factor impacting the industrial concentration of development zones in Shanghai, but a high degree of leading industrial concentration appears in those development zones with clear functional positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]