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The reorganization of the global production network and the increased mobility of urban-rural elements have accelerated the differentiation of rural spaces, resulting in a trend towards specialization in rural areas. This paper focuses on the concept of specialization, and takes a renowned bonsai specialized village in Guangzhou City, China as a typical case to explore its transformation and development process, action logic and coupling mechanism with the social governance. The results show that: 1) the development of rural specialization in Ruiling Village is shaped by several key actors, such as local governments, grassroots organizations, villagers, social organizations, policies, markets and infrastructure. The transfer of these key actors and the reconstruction of actor-networks in different stages have an important influence on the transformation and realization of rural development goals. 2) Through subjects-driven, organization management and resource connection, social governance supports the specialization of rural industrial organization, operation, technology and mode. The governance structure shifts from decentralization to networking, refinement and integration. A coupling community of social governance and specialization is created by the social governance system of 'local government-grassroots organizations-economic cooperatives-villagers', which links industries, industrial chains and cooperatives. 3) Social governance integrates into the value chain extension process of rural specialized development with a central, multi-level organizational structure. It promotes the construction of the whole value chain through organizational planning, resource integration and image shaping, thus realizing the value, branding and organization of the industry, as well as the integration of rural sustainable development and governance mechanism. Social governance has a profound impact on the development of rural specialization in terms of subject, structure and mode, and participates in the construction of the whole value chain of rural areas. This paper provides a new perspective for understanding the coupling effect of social governance in the rural development transformation, and promotes the rural sustainable development and governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The middle class in metropolitan Chinese cities has become an important social group. With the rapid development of urbanization and constant advancement of suburbanization, the middle class has increasingly come to influence city traffic. Research into middle-class commuting activities thus has practical significance for improving traffic congestion and reducing the commuting burden in metropolitan cities. Based on a dataset formed by 816 completed surveys, this paper analyzes the commuting mode, time and distance of middle-class residents in Guangzhou City using the descriptive statistical method. The results indicate that private cars are the main commuting mode, followed by public transport. Meanwhile, middle-class residents mainly undertake medium-short time and medium- short distance commuting. The study subsequently uses multilevel logistic regression and multiple linear regression models to analyze the factors that influence commuting mode choice, time and distance. The gender, age, number of family cars, housing source and jobs-housing balance are the most important factors influencing commuting mode choice; housing, population density, jobs-housing balance and commuting mode significantly affect commuting time; and transport accessibility, jobs-housing balance and commuting mode are the notable factors affecting commuting distance. Finally, this paper analyzes what is affecting the commuting activities of middle-class residents and determines the differences in commuting activity characteristics and influence factors between middle-class and ordinary residents. Policy suggestions to improve urban planning and urban management are also proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By focusing on Guangzhou, this paper examines how different concepts of city in terms of urban-rural relationships are shaped in transforming China since 1949, and explores how they influence the way in which urban planning are practiced. In the pre-reform era, the city was defined as a productive space under the system of urban-rural segregation established for securing rapid industrialization. Urban planning was thus only concerned with the development of urban areas. In the 1980s and 1990s after the reform, institutional change and economic transformation mobilized the urban-rural linkages. The development of suburban areas was then considered by urban planning, but this consideration was a passive response to urban problems such as population explosion and water resources protection. Since the new millennium, the agenda for sustainable development and problems of uneven urban-rural development have called for the development of urban-rural integration. In this context, the city is conceptualized as a complex of mountain, city, river, farmland and sea, reconstructing the ideology of urban-rural division in defining urban development. Urban planning has therefore sought in an active way to develop a sustainable city embracing rural and natural elements, and to balance economic growth and environmental protection. It is argued that developing the concept of city as a complex of urban and rural elements contributes to the urban planning for sustainable urban development, while this conceptualization relies on the recognition of the integrated urban-rural relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metropolitan cities in China are commonly confronted with unresolved traffic congestion issues, primarily due to rapidly increasing traffic demand. Group disparity between commuting mode choice and its spatial distribution on road networks has enabled us to examine the factors that give rise to the discrepancies and the fundamental spatial causes of traffic congestion. In recent years, micro-perspective, individual, and behavior-based spatial analysis have mushroomed and been facilitated with effective tools such as temporal geographic information systems (T-GIS). It is difficult to study the interrelations between transport and space on the basis of commuting mode choice since the mode choice data are invisible in a specific space such as a particular road network. Therefore, in the field of transport, the classical origin destination (OD) four-stage model (FSM) is usually employed to calculate data when studying commuting mode choice. Based on the relative principles of T-GIS and the platform of ArcGIS, this paper considers Guangzhou as a case study and develops a spatio-temporal tool to examine the daily activities of residents. Meanwhile, the traffic volume distribution in rush hours, which was analyzed according to commuting modes and how they were reflected in the road network, was scrutinized with data extracted from travel diaries. Moreover, efforts were made to explain the relationship between traffic demand and urban spatial structure. Based on the investigation, this research indicates that traffic volumes in divergent groups and on the road networks is driven by: 1) the socio-economic characteristics of travelers; 2) a jobs-housing imbalance under suburbanization; 3) differences in the spatial supply of transport modes; 4) the remains of the Danwei (work unit) system and market development in China; and 5) the transition of urban spatial structure and other factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile information and communication technologies (MICTs) have fully penetrated everyday life in smart societies; this has greatly compressed time, space, and distance, and consequently, reshaped residents' travel behaviour patterns. As a new mode of shared mobility, the sharing bicycle offers a variety of options for the daily travel of urban residents. Extant studies have mainly examined the travel characteristics and influencing factors of public bicycles with piles, while the travel patterns for sharing bicycles and their driving mechanisms have been largely ignored. Using one week's travel data for Mobike, this study investigated the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of sharing bicycle travel behaviours in the central urban area of Guangzhou, China; furthermore, it identified the influences of built environment density factors on sharing bicycle travel behaviours based on the geographically weighted regression method. Obvious morning and evening peaks were observed in the sharing bicycle travel patterns for both weekdays and weekends. The old urban area, which had a high degree of mixed function, dense road networks, and cycling-friendly built environments, was the main travel area that attracted sharing bicycles on both weekdays and weekends. Furthermore, factors including the point of interest (POI) for the density of public transport stations, the functional mixing degree, and the density of residential POIs significantly affected residents' travel behaviours. These findings could enrich discourse regarding shared mobility with a Chinese case characterised by rapidly developing MICTs and also provide references to local authorities for improving slow traffic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the spatiotemporal patterns of three-dimensional urban forms, especially building height, can have important implications for improving urban air quality and mitigating the urban heat island effect by optimizing urban planning and management policies. This study investigated building height evolution and its influencing factors over approximately half a century (1960–2017) in Guangzhou, China. The results indicated that the logarithmic declines in height, quantity, and area of urban buildings followed Zapfs law, which restricts the three-dimensional shape of the urban form. The urban building height decreased from the center to the periphery of the city and decreased with decreasing altitude and increasing distance from main roads. These characteristics constituted the three main spatial differentiation rules of building height in the central district of Guangzhou, and all exhibited a logarithmic decrease, which gradually strengthened over time. The development of a double-layered height structure of low-rise and high-rise buildings between 1990 and 2017 was a notable manifestation of the increase in vertical urban height over time. The three factors of city center, altitude, and accessibility, which represent centrality, low relief, proximity to water, and proximity to road networks, highlighted the roles of traffic accessibility and commercial attraction in building height evolution. The importance of location macroscopically depends on the combined effect of the geographical pattern, urban planning, and market forces of cities located on a plain near hill or by a river. The principle of profit orientation restricted spatiotemporal building height patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]