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Greater understanding of the topological evolution characteristics of the supply side of urban transport systems could help urban planners and policy makers uncover patterns of both city growth and road development. This paper examines the road network topological evolution characteristics of a unique government-oriented development district, Shanghai Pudong New District, from 1995 to 2007, where a road-name–based dual approach is adopted to capture the homogeneity and functional continuity of different segments. The urban road network is found to evolve from a broad-scale system to a scale-free system driven by the government interventions. A generalized extreme value distribution is utilized to provide a general form for the road network topological evolution model with a good fit. This scale-free road network has shown to be effective in supporting economic development. This paper offers a new perspective that describes the patterns of topological evolution characteristics for transportation planners regarding network design and urban planning in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent institutional changes, marketization, and globalization have combined to bring about rapid economic growth in contemporary China, One of the direct outcomes is the rapid expansion of large cities and the recurring birth of new cities from small towns and rural villages. Clustered construction cranes are popular scenes in many Chinese cities. One of the noticeable city landmarks is the specialized economic development district, such as a hi-tech park, industrial park, commerce park, high-standard apartment complex, and designated port district. Along with the development of these new types of urban blocks, the Chinese policies and practices of urban planning and city design have been dramatically reshaped. This paper, on the basis of our participatory observation of the planning process of the Shenzhen Silicon Peak Software Ecological Park, examines site planning and design of hi-tech parks in China. The paper discusses the seven principles guiding the development of hi-tech parks, and the four implementation strategies directing planning and design practices. It also illustrates the adoption of GIS techniques, the new eco-community planning approach, and the classic Chinese cosmology—harmonious wind and water (feng shui)—through the case study. The paper concludes with discussion of the changes of Chinese values and practices of urban planning in the context of hi-tech parks in the transitional period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of studies on Chinese urbanization have been focused on coastal areas, with little attention given to urban centers in the west. Western provinces, however, will unquestionably undergo significant urban change in the future as a result of the 'Go West' policy initiated in the 1990s. In this paper the authors examine the relationship between drivers of urban growth and land- use outcomes in Chengdu, capital of the western province of Sichuan, China. In the first part of this research, remotely sensed data are used to map changes in land cover in the greater Chengdu area and to investigate the spatial distribution of development with use of landscape metrics along seven urban-to-rural transects identified as key corridors of growth. Results indicate that the urbanized area increased by more than 350% between 1978 and 2002 in three distinct spatial trends: (a) near the urban fringe in all directions prior to 1990, (b) along transportation corridors, ring roads, and near satellite cities after 1990, and, finally, (c) infilling in southern and western areas (connecting satellite cities to the urban core) in the late 1990s. In the second part of this paper the authors connect patterns of growth with economic, land, and housing market reforms, which are explored in the context of urban planning initiatives. The results reveal that, physically, Chengdu is following trends witnessed in coastal cities of China, although the importance of various land-use drivers differs from that in the east (for example, in the low level of foreign direct investment to date). The information provided by the land-use analysis ultimately helped tailor policies and plans for better land management and reduced fragmentation of new development in the municipality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 1995 has been widely identified as a watershed in China’s urbanisation process. The period before was deemed as ‘urbanisation from below’ with a focus on small cities and towns, whereas the period afterwards has been characterised by the ‘land-centred development’ of large cities. This paper argues that there have been further spatial and temporal differentiations since 2000. By adopting a city-regional perspective of urban land expansion, the urban growth and spatial-restructuring process of different levels of cities in Yangtze River Delta Region were examined. Different indicators and technical measures such as spatial autocorrelation analysis and Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping analysis were employed to examine growth rates, growth intensity levels and the spatial clustering patterns of 15 city-regions over three time periods between 1985 and 2007. Through the development of a unified land classification system with satellite images, and the use of the GIS grid-overlay method, our analysis overcomes various identified methodological problems of previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hierarchy is an important property of a street network, which suggests that only a small number of streets are prominent. A previous empirical study of a European city has identified four levels of scale in a street network, namely the top 1%, top 20%, bottom 80%, and bottom 20%. This paper investigates such street hierarchies in a large Asian city, Wuhan, with a complicated network of streets. Based on network analysis, we find that street hierarchies in this case study are slightly different so that the fourth scale is adjusted from the initial 20 to 25%. The detected street hierarchies are further compared to the intensity of large-scale traffic flows at different time scales. We find that distributions of both daily and hourly traffic conform well to the street hierarchies. More specifically, the 20% of top streets accommodate about 98% of traffic flow, and the 1% of top streets account for more than 60% of traffic flow. Moreover, this finding indicates that the current street network of Wuhan needs to be improved because the top 20% of streets are rather overburdened leading to traffic congestion. Our study not only provides new quantitative evidence as to the emergence of street hierarchies but also highlights the possible traffic congestion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of the Chinese economy has led to an increasing fraction of agricultural land being converted to nonagricultural uses. The zoning and protection of farmland with the best agricultural quality (basic farmland) is extremely intensive and complicated work. In this paper we establish a remote sensing, geographic information system, and particle swarm optimisation (PSO) multiobjective decision model (MODM) to calculate the optimum solution for basic farmland protection. Furthermore, a new particle evolution rule combined with a genetic algorithm is introduced to improve the solution performance. The PSO-based zoning model is then utilised in the case study of Yicheng, Hubei Province, China, to demonstrate that our MODM framework excels in providing an optimum solution for balancing the three objectives of basic farmland zoning and protection: maximising farmland spatial compactness, maximising farmland soil fertility, and minimising transportation cost. In particular, the model compares alternative Pareto-optimal scenarios in which several objectives can be achieved without compromising the other objectives to obtain a real and practical blueprint for action. Our model enables urban planners to test and compare the different scenarios under various particle swarm conditions. In addition, the PSO-based zoning model constitutes a true guide for real-world planners, and this model can be extended to specify basic farmland protection optimisations in other regions of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accelerating urbanization all over the world has renewed interdisciplinary interest and public concerns over sustainable urban forms. Despite abundant literature on the concentric model and its application to urban land-use patterns, a rigorous and straightforward methodology to characterize the model quantitatively in space is especially needed. In this paper we present a diagramatic method and refine five indicators to measure and clarify the circular pattern of urban expansion. With remote sensing data, the approach has been examined for the sample set of fifty-one cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region of China. The five indicators adopted illustrated that most of YRD cities display a compact centralized form with a relatively small matured core area and are undergoing fast expansion. Furthermore, we have found distinctive local models of density gradient in built-up areas, shaped by urban population size and local institutional structures. The preliminary results related to the methodology are inspiring, which should be useful for elucidating urban growth trends and for decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite China's rapid economic growth and embedding into global value chains, not much is known about the primary places where buyers and sellers from China and abroad meet, do business, and circulate information and knowledge: that is, the national/ international trade fairs in the country. Previous reports suggest that the number and size of such events in China is growing and that the trade fair business is in the process of catching up. Under these circumstances, trade fairs may develop into import or export events, where buyers and sellers engage in transactions, or into temporary clusters, where they exchange knowledge for industrial upgrading and innovation. In this context this paper explores the interaction and communication patterns of firms at Chinese trade fairs and investigates whether these events are similar to those in Europe and North America. The analysis involves systematic comparison of the communication and interaction practices at three national/international trade fairs in Shanghai and Chengdu, based on a total of 102 semistructured interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss how cyberspace has been interwoven in the geographies of social stratification and segregation nowadays. It conceptualizes 'virtual segregation' as an extension of the 'digital divide' and sociospatial segregation in urban spaces. A case study was conducted in Hong Kong in 2010, when 770 Internet users were surveyed. A comparison of their patterns of Internet use shows that these individuals, all of whom possess devices and Internet access, have varied levels of connectivity in cyberspace. A typology of Internet users was then derived from the perspective of virtual segregation. The findings suggest that people may be stratified and segregated in cyberspace in similar ways to the physical world, and that segregation studies should pay more attention to virtual segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban form takes on properties similar to random growing fractals and can be described in terms of fractal geometry. However, a model of simple fractals is not effectual enough to characterize both the global and local features of urban patterns. In this paper multifractal measurements are employed to model urban form and analyze urban growth. The capacity dimension D0, information dimension D1, and correlation dimension D2 of a city's pattern can be estimated utilizing the box-counting method. If D0 < D1 < D2 significantly, the city can be treated as a system of multifractals, and two sets of fractal parameters, including global and local parameters, can be used to spatially analyze urban growth. In this case study, multifractal geometry was applied to Beijing city, China. The results based on the remote-sensing images taken in 1988, 1992, 1999, 2006, and 2009 show that the urban landscape of Beijing bears multiscaling fractal attributes. The dimension spectrum curves show several abnormal aspects, especially the upper limit of the global dimension breaks through the Euclidean dimension of embedding space and the local dimension fails to converge in a proper way. The geographical features of Beijing's spatiotemporal evolution are discussed, and the conclusions may be instructive for spatial optimization and city planning in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we ask two questions: Does a multiscalar urban land-change model that couples a region-scale system dynamics model with a local-scale spatial logit model better predict the amount of urban land change than either model alone? Does a multiscalar urban land-change model that couples regional and local-scale factors better predict the spatial patterns of urban land change than a standalone local-scale spatial logit model? To examine these questions, we develop a coupled system dynamics spatial logit (CSDSL) model for the Pearl River Delta, China, that incorporates region-scale population and economic factors with local-scale biophysical and accessibility factors. In terms of predicting the amounts of urban land change, the CSDSL model is 15% and 18% more accurate than the standalone spatial logit and system dynamics models, respectively. In terms of predicting the spatial pattern of urban land change, the CSDSL model slightly outperforms the spatial logit model as measured by four spatial pattern metrics: number of urban patches, urban edge density, average urban patch size, and spatial irregularity of the urban area. Both the CSDSL and spatial logit models underpredict the number of discrete urban patches (by 64% and 80%, respectively) and the urban edge density (by 42% and 62%, respectively). While both models overpredict the average urban patch size, the spatial logit model overpredicts by over 316%, while the CSDSL overpredicts by 192%. Finally, the models perform equally well in predicting the spatial irregularity of urban areas and the location of urban change. Taken together, these results demonstrate that the CSDSL model outperforms a standalone spatial logit or system dynamics model in predicting the amount and spatial complexity of urban land change. The results also show that predicting urban land-change patterns remains more diffi cult than predicting total amounts of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose an approach to identify the spatial policy parameters (termed the implementation intensity reflecting planning controls on corresponding spatial constraint) associated with a predefined alternative plan, namely, a predefined-binary urban form. During plan implementation, the alternative plan cannot be fully realized in some cases due to practical urban growth driven by both institutional forces and market incentives, which are comprehensive and complex. Few researchers have investigated spatial policies appropriate for an alternative plan. We aim to propose a novel approach incorporating constrained cellular automata and regionalized sensitivity analysis, a method for global sensitivity analysis to calculate the realization possibility and identify the spatial policy parameters for an alternative plan. This approach is first tested in a virtual space with four predefined urban forms and various point, line, and polygon spatial constraints, with both positive and negative impacts on urban growth. Finally, the approach is also tested in the Beijing Metropolitan Area to identify the required spatial policy parameters for four alternative plans with seven spatial constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we employ readily available categories of public data, rarely used in the literature on racial segregation, to scrutinise three research questions about the proposition of Lai and Yu (2001 Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 28 295-314) that statutory zoning, which discriminates against a certain class of citizens, can be a form of price control. The key findings are that there was a large Chinese population on the Peak in Hong Kong even when the law did not allow Chinese people to own property there, that the process of acquiring European properties for residential purposes after the removal of the law was slow, and the Peak remained predominantly European until the 1980s. In other words, the factual evidence supports the argument that racially discriminatory zoning in the Peak District had not been predicated on racial animosity or aversion. The residential history of the Peak and another exclusively European housing enclave in Shek O established prewar under company law points towards the reality that the attempt to prevent the Chinese from buying properties in certain areas of Hong Kong was driven by idiosyncratic demands for a particular housing style. These two case studies demonstrated that contractual planning is much more capable of preserving the character of a neighbourhood than obligatory planning by edict. Some economic reasons behind the resilience of planning by mutual agreement and their implications for sustainable development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many behavioral and nonbehavioral models have been proposed to model pedestrian behavior. Among these, pedestrians' decision processes have not been explicitly modeled. Utility-maximizing models have been prominently used, but these models may be misspecified owing to their unrealistic assumptions. As an alternative, this paper proposes cut-off models based on the satisficing heuristic founded in bounded rationality theory. The go-home decision of pedestrians in Wang Fujing Street, Beijing, is taken as an example. Results of a multinomial logit model and three cut-off models with increasing complexity are compared. The results show that the cut-off models can fit the data equally as well as the multinomial logit model, suggesting that satisficing heuristics not only have theoretical advantages but also statistical power, Introducing a decision engagement module before the satisficing decision module significantly improves the cut-off model and supports the hypothesis of a hierarchical decision process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the first part of our study, we use a linear statistical technique to examine the impact of the announcement of China's decision to take back Hong Kong from the United Kingdom in 1982, the Tiananmen Square incident of 4 June 1989, the Asian financial crisis (AFC) of 1997, and the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 on Hong Kong's housing market in terms of prices. A total of 11362 residential transactions from a cluster of data for a large private-housing estate, considered to be representative of Hong Kong's private residential market, were used to test four hypotheses that evaluate the impact of shocks on property prices through the use of a hedonic price model. The influences based on the statistical findings, which satisfy the relevant goodness-of-fit tests, are (a) that the sovereignty crisis exerted immediate significant negative price effect, but property prices rebounded after a big decline when open diplomatic dialogue between the Chinese and UK governments began, (b) that the Tiananmen Square (4 June) incident had no significant price effect; (c) that the AFC caused a drastic decline in property prices; and (d) that the impact of the SARS outbreak was significantly negative for Amoy Gardens but not so for estates with fewer reported SARS cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a method for using the mathematics of fuzzy sets that is well suited to measure and characterize periurbanizing (desakota) systems typical of China, Southeast Asia, and other areas experiencing rapid urbanization. Drawing on Kosko's 'fuzzy hypercube', we derive three distinct but interdependent measures: (1) extent of urbanization, (2) level of fuzziness, and (3) degree of entropy. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated by using remote sensing data for Ningbo, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]