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From the perspective of transportation infrastructure upgrading, this paper discussed the motivation behind industrial firms' pollution transfer to provincial borders. Using a panel data set of 41 cities in China's Yangtze River Delta from 2005 to 2020, this paper empirically tested the impact of intracity and intercity transportation infrastructure upgrading on pollution transfer through a two-way fixed-effects model. The results revealed the following: First, intracity transportation infrastructure upgrading forces local industrial firms to transfer pollution outward. Second, intercity transportation infrastructure upgrading accelerates pollution transfer to provincial borders. Third, in the central region, intracity transportation infrastructure upgrading does not significantly impact local pollution transfer. Intercity transportation infrastructure upgrading can aggravate border pollution, whether in the eastern or central regions. Furthermore, border pollution is more serious in the central region. The results have important practical significance for improving China's regional development planning and environmental governance system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrialization and urbanization are significant facets of modernization. The asynchronous development of the two is closely related to the agglomeration of producer services. This paper constructed an asynchrony index to describe the development gap between industrialization and urbanization. Various spatial weight matrices were introduced to test the spatial autocorrelation of the asynchrony index. Applying spatial econometric models, we explored the impact of agglomeration of producer services on the asynchrony index from two aspects: diversified agglomeration (DA) and specialized agglomeration (SA). The following conclusions are drawn from the empirical findings, which are based on data from 31 Chinese provinces between 2008 and 2019: (1) the asynchrony of industrialization and urbanization exhibits the spatial autocorrelation increasing over time; (2) SA exacerbates the asynchrony, while DA alleviates the asynchrony; (3) SA exerts greater impacts in highly industrialized and urbanized regions, while DA exerts greater effects in lowly industrialized and urbanized regions; and (4) agricultural dependence and infrastructure level weaken the impacts of SA and strengthen the impacts of DA. Income level weakens the impacts of both SA and DA. The results of this study provide a reference for policymakers to adjust the industrial layout in a targeted manner to regulate the asynchronous nature of modernization development. Peace and development are the themes of the world today. Most developing countries are experiencing or about to experience industrialization and urbanization. The world reality indicates that the two are not always synchronized in countries due to resource and cultural differences. Producer services not only improve agricultural and industrial production efficiency but also bring population agglomeration effects like other industries. In the era of informatization, the producer services exert a profound impact on industrialization and urbanization through two agglomeration modes. This technical paper quantifies the asynchrony between industrialization and urbanization using data from 31 provinces in China and verifies the opposite effects of two agglomeration modes on asynchrony. In cities with different levels of industrialization and urbanization, cities with higher or lower agricultural dependence, and cities with higher or lower infrastructure levels, the impact direction of the two agglomeration modes shows stability, while the magnitude varies. Cities with higher per capita income tend to develop into consumer cities, where industrialization should lag behind urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's increasingly complex stock era, resilient community planning for uncertainty risks is important for building resilient cities and communities and for realizing the refinement, process, and systematization of planning. Therefore, this paper proposes the concept of community planning resilience based on resilience theory and explores a framework system for evaluating the planning resilience of renewal and transformation community by taking renewal and transformation future community planning of Zhejiang as the research object. At the same time, the technical path of realizing public participation in community planning is explored through the method, mechanism, and technical platform of fuzzy group decision-making. Finally, the feasibility of the aforementioned framework and approach is experimentally explored and verified based on a typical case of renewal and renovation of future community planning. In order to make community regeneration planning more planning resilient, this paper develops a community planning group decision-making study from the perspective of community planning resilience, which provides a new research perspective for the field of community resilience and provides a reference for community planning evaluation and the construction of resilient communities. Practical Applications: In China's advancing urbanization, major cities are grappling with diverse risks, necessitating urban planning and governance with heightened resilience to face unforeseen black swan events and foreseeable gray rhinoceros challenges. This urgency is particularly pronounced in community renewal, prompting a vital shift from rigid to resilient planning methodologies. To address this shift, this paper advocates for resilient community construction to be a focal point in both policy and practical implementation of community regeneration. A novel approach utilizing the fuzzy decision-making method is proposed to establish a comprehensive resilient community renewal decision-making technology support system. This system employs a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, integrating an empowerment approach to simplify the complexities of a multicriteria index system. By mitigating the risks inherent in resilience planning, our approach enhances the scientific foundation and feasibility of decision-making in community renewal. A case study on the Future Community in Zhejiang Province validates the effectiveness of our approach, providing practical insights for constructing resilient community renewal models and system technology platforms. This research contributes to the ongoing exploration of strategies and technologies capable of addressing diverse challenges in urban development, providing references in enhancing urban resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the urban human settlements of 21 megacities and supercities from 2011 to 2020 in China and improve urban human settlements planning and management. First, the data envelopment analysis (DEA)–Malmquist–Tobit model is used to conduct a static and dynamic evaluation of the efficiency of urban human settlements and analyze the main factors that affect it. Then, the coupling coordination degree model is utilized to quantitatively evaluate the coupling coordination degree between urban human settlements and high-quality economic development. Finally, the GM (1, 1) model is established to predict each city's average input–output index during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. It is hoped that this paper could promote sustainable urban development. The empirical results are as follows: (1) the technical efficiency (TE) from CRS DEA of human settlements in China's megacities and supercities is low. Management and technology are the shortcomings in the development of urban human settlements; (2) total factor productivity (TFP) has shown negative growth. Technical progress efficiency (TC) is the key to improving the efficiency of urban human settlements; (3) urban infrastructure has the most significant role when promoting the efficiency of urban human settlements; (4) the coupling degree between the efficiency of human settlements and high-quality economic development is mainly high-level coupling. The degree of coordination is gradually rising; and (5) during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the investment in human settlements in both types of cities will continue to increase. With the continuous expansion of investment, the output will be imbalanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The business environment is a critical element in promoting high-quality urban economic development. To evaluate the quality of the business environment in Chinese cities, we first build a business environment evaluation system in this paper. Then using the entropy weight, Dagum Gini coefficient, β-convergence model, and Markov chain method, we evaluate and analyze the development level, spatial differences, and dynamic development patterns of the business environments in 278 cities in China from 2003 to 2019. Our findings reveal that the overall business environment level in Chinese cities is not high. There are significant differences in business environment levels between megacities, large cities, and small–medium-sized cities, and within-group differences and between-group differences are the main reasons for the differences in business environment levels. However, the contribution rate of within-group differences shows a downward trend, while the contribution rate of between-group differences shows an upward trend. In addition, the business environment levels in Chinese cities have spatial correlation, and the national and three major city groups' business environment levels exhibit strong absolute and conditional β-convergence processes. Finally, the business environment levels in Chinese cities demonstrate path dependence, which is typified by low mobility and makes achieving upward mobility challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced manufacturing agglomeration (AMA) plays a significant role in supporting regional development, but few studies have examined it on a regional geographic space. In this paper, the relationship between AMA and regional economic‒innovative‒social coupling coordination development (EISCCD) was studied spatially at a fine-grained scale (500 m × 500 m), taking Liangjiang New Area (LJNA), China, as an example. The results showed that (1) the spatial patterns of AMA and EISCCD in LJNA were similar; (2) among the four different combinations, the economic‒social combination had the highest degree of coupling coordination and a more balanced spatial distribution; (3) AMA and the four coupling coordination combinations all showed significant positive relationships, with innovation playing a prominent mediating role; and (4) there was evident spatial heterogeneity in the relationship between AMA and ECICCD. These results demonstrate the possibility of building suburban subcenters with advanced manufacturing. These findings are beneficial for urban and regional planners to monitor the development status at different locations within cities, enabling precise construction and management of various facilities, enhancing land utilization efficiency, and aiding in the realization of a business-friendly and livable urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decades, the association between the quality of the urban living environment and individual subjective well-being (SWB) has received wide attention in many metropolitan areas across the world. However, few studies have focused on the effects of the quality of the urban living environment on SWB from a human perception perspective and concerned the underdeveloped areas such as resource-based cities. Drawing on a large-scale social survey data set collected from the City Health Examination Evaluation (CHEE) in China, this paper employed the Geographical Detector method to reveal the association between the CHEE and individual subjective well-being in four resource-based cities in China (Ganzhou, Huangshi, Jingdezhen, and Luoyang). The results showed that the SWB and CHEE of the respondents in the resource-based cities are generally good, with mean evaluation scores of 4.15 and 4.27, respectively. The factor detector results indicated that the eight subdimensions of the CHEE are all significantly associated with individual SWB in the resource-based cities, with the q-statistic values in the following decreasing order: life amenities > urban management > urban vitality > diversity and inclusiveness > security and resilience > convenient transportation > urban landscape and scenery > ecological livability. Furthermore, individual socioeconomic attributes, such as gender, hukou, house tenure, car ownership, age, household income, and occupation, were also significantly associated with individual SWB. The interaction factor results revealed that there are bilinear enhancing and nonlinear enhancing effects on individual SWB after the interaction between the subdimensions in the CHEE. Regarding city types, the average evaluation scores of the CHEE and SWB in the declining cities, mature cities, and regenerating cities decreases in turn, and the subdimensions of the CHEE had heterogeneous effects on individual SWB across city types. The findings in this study could provide insights into improving individual SWB in China's resource-based cities by enhancing the quality of the urban living environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strength of government environmental concern strength (GECS) and the differential supply of construction land (DSCL) can effectively act as important indicators of regional environmental protection dynamics and economic development pressures. Based on the panel data of Chinese 281 cities, from 2007 to 2018, this study first measures the degree of urban environmental protection pressure (UEPP) by using a game combination assignment method. Then, a fixed effects model is used to quantitatively measure the effects of GECS and DSCL on UEPP from the two perspectives of "urban environmental risk (UER) and urban social response (USR)." The UEPP in China tended to decrease during the study period. For about 52.67% of the urban areas studied, both GECS and DSCL could effectively reduce the UEPP. Moreover, the areas where the DSCL increased the UEPP are mainly located at the border between the eastern and the central regions, and in the northeastern region. In addition, the spatial layout of the impact of GECS and DSCL on USR is similar to the spatial layout of the impact of GECS and DSCL on UEPP. According to different impact mechanisms, the study areas are divided into eight groups, and this study finds that government departments should formulate relevant measures and policies according to local conditions, in order to promote sustainable urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests China's three-dimensional intergovernmental competition in terms of land leasing. Using the land-leasing data of China's prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2019 collected from China Land Market, and with the help of the dynamic spatial Durbin model, we show that in the land-leasing behavior of prefecture-level cities in China, three-dimensional government competition does exist and that the influence coefficient from high to low is the government competition of different periods in the same region, shown as horizontal government competition and vertical government competition, respectively. In particular, China's government competition and regional economic development show a clear correlation. We find obvious heterogeneity: in the eastern region, the government competition for land leasing started earlier and has now begun to transform. However, the three-dimensional government competition in the western region lags behind the national level. Therefore, urban development should emerge from the mindset of blindly focusing on the expansion of urban areas, paying more attention to the guiding role of urban planning in urban development and promoting cities on the path of sustainable development by improving the efficiency of land use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governance of urban shrinkage has recently become an important topic for geographers and urban planners. However, a comprehensive exploration of the various spatial problems and governance paths in shrinking cities remains a huge gap in urban shrinkage governance literature. Building on the review and induction of extensive literature, this paper constructs a theoretical framework for the spatial governance of urban shrinkage from four perspectives: conceptual connotations, influencing factors, paths, and effects. By field investigation and policy interpretation, it takes Jixi City as a case, a coal-based shrinking city in China, to explore the policy response of the government and their effects. We find that the spatial governance of Jixi is a process of multisubject participation and multielement integration focusing on various spatial issues, which confirms the rationality of the analytical framework. Also, there are both similarities and differences in the spatial governance of urban shrinkage between Western countries and Chinese. This study enriches the theory of urban shrinkage governance, shows Chinese characteristics in urban governance, and provides governance enlightenment for other shrinking cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A smart city is regarded as a new form of urban development proposed by humans to cope with urban problems. Smart cities are of great interest to theoretical circles and are favored by city governments. However, in China, research on common problems and solution strategies in the process of smart city construction is still insufficient. To address this insufficiency, we utilized Python language and the Selenium library to realize a web crawler and construct a smart city corpus background library. Then, the word2vec model was used for word vectorization to divide policy texts into phrases, and 132 policies from 85 cities above the prefecture level in China were analyzed using the Gaussian mixture model (GMM). The results showed many problems in the smart city construction process in China, including the homogenization of content, the wide topic coverage, the influence of higher-level governments, the mismatch with the local situation, and the neglect of relationship governance. Moreover, an efficiency-governance model was designed, and it held certain theoretical and practical guiding significance for further promoting the healthy and sustainable development of smart city construction in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development statuses of cities are intimately associated with their spatial scales. Multiscale trajectories of cities are lenses through which can be discerned the pattern and tendency of regional development. In this paper, using comparisons of demographic and economic development, geographic detectors, and hierarchical logistic regressions, we examine the evolutionary characteristics and influential factors of multiscale urban development in Jilin Province, China. The findings show that alongside the "top-down" transformations of the spatial scales, the typologies of urban development tend to diversify. Economic and political factors played key roles in the divergence of growth and shrinkage of prefecture-level, while natural and social factors had strong effects on the divergence between growth and shrinkage of county-level cities and small towns. Moreover, urban development has demonstrated scale connection: towns under the jurisdictions of absolutely growing county-level cities are likely to be subjected to smart shrinkage; towns under the jurisdictions of smartly growing county-level cities are prone to potential shrinkage; towns under the jurisdictions of absolutely shrinking county-level cities are at risk of absolute shrinkage. Our findings recommend that regional policies take multiscale spaces into account to capture regularity of regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past, research on urban spatial structure under complex terrain conditions has mostly remained at the level of analyzing a specific city and a single type of terrain, the limitations of the research scope and perspective making it difficult to fully determine any general laws. In order to effectively grasp the mode of spatial expansion, development law, and evolutionary mechanism, we innovatively chose to combine dynamic and static research methods, utilizing static and dynamic maps as two mutually supportive analysis paths, and taking 71 typical cities in China as samples to provide empirical evidence. Our results indicate that there is a phenomenon of differentiation in the types of preferred spatial structure of cities under different terrains, which is realized through the urban space adapting to the topographic constraints, penetrating into the topography, and crossing the topography to break through barriers of scale. Compared with plains cities, the spatial structure of cities under complex terrain changes from compact to decentralized, the urban form tends toward complex from single, and the development rate is divided into two trends of continuous acceleration and reduced growth rate. The reason for this is that the topographical environment is the fundamental influencing factor, and social factors, such as economy and population, play an inherent driving role. National policies directly determine the flow of land and other factors, which are ultimately reflected in the spatial structure. These insights are beneficial for improving the academic research system in this field, as well as supporting the foresight of planning schemes, the direction of optimization measures, and the decision-making of urban agglomeration development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The speed of urbanization in China has been unprecedented, and its driving force has been given much attention in the field. Previous literature analyzes the driving factors of China's urbanization from various aspects, including the economy, population, transportation, housing, and other market factors. However, this study explored the influence of power factors on urbanization from a new perspective of city leaders. Based on the panel data from 285 Chinese cities from 2006 to 2017, a fixed effects model was used to analyze the influence of city leaders' power hierarchy and promotion pressure on the speed of land and population urbanization. The main conclusions are as follows: First, the power hierarchy of party secretaries has a significant positive impact on land urbanization speed. Party secretaries with a higher position hierarchy can promote land urbanization speed. Second, the promotion pressure of party secretaries exerts a significant impact on land urbanization speed. An inverted "U" relationship has been observed between the age of party secretaries and the speed of land urbanization. The speed reaches its maximum when party secretaries are approximately 56 years old. Furthermore, party secretaries' tenure has a positive and significant impact on land urbanization speed. Third, the power hierarchy and promotion pressure of party secretaries have no significant impact on the population's urbanization speed. In addition, this research finds that land finance acts as a mediating factor in the influence of party secretaries' power hierarchy and promotion pressure on land urbanization speed. The conclusions can provide suggestions for improving official evaluation mechanisms and expanding financing for urban construction to promote the development of new human-centered urbanization in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This fundamental investigation aimed to deliver a new theoretical perspective to address the brain drain problem from Northeast China. The amenity theory could provide a robust ideological foundation that enables cities to attract talent and drive urban innovation and development. This study explores the spatial–temporal pattern evolution of talent inflow to Northeast China based on data from the China Migrant Dynamic Survey (CMDS) from 2012 to 2018. It utilizes spatial analysis methods and geographic detectors to interpret the factors that influence the spatial heterogeneity of talent inflow from the perspective of urban amenities. The following results were obtained. First, the trend in the number of talent inflows displays an initial increase followed by fluctuations before inflow destinations are concentrated in four major cities and certain resource-based cities in Northeast China. Second, a high-quality labor force is engaged in varied industries. Talents with different academic qualifications could avail themselves of diverse employment choices, primarily in information transmission, software, and information technology services. Those with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees could find positions in the education industry. Third, the talent flow mode has gradually changed from interprovincial to intercity movements within a particular province. However, the mode of talent flow differs according to discrete academic qualifications. Most postgraduates choose the interprovincial flow, and undergraduates and junior college students predominantly select the intercity flow within a particular province. Fourth, the inflow of talent to destinations in Northeast China is based on artificial amenities and tends toward cities that offer efficient public services, abundant leisure facilities, and innovative soft and hard environments. The major factors that affect the spatial differentiation in talent inflow to a city include the number of hospital beds per 10,000 people, scientific research, creative practitioners, talent-related policies, exhibition halls and other leisure and entertainment venues, and average housing prices in the city. Most interactions between artificial environment amenity factors and other elements are better than their individual effects, especially the interactive configuration of affordable urban housing prices, high-quality public resources, such as education and health care, and abundant leisure and entertainment facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, old city zone renovation projects have become more frequent in China. But such projects--focusing on a city's image while ignoring people's livelihoods, local social environment, and cultural conditions--usually pose relatively large risks to society. In this paper, the construction of an indicator system for social ex-post evaluation of old city zone renovation projects, including fairness, convenience, safety, and satisfaction, taking into account the characteristics and requirements of social ex-post evaluation of old city zone, is discussed. Relative deviations between the proportion of certain subpopulations affected by the old city zone renovation project and the relative number of visitors to the project area after its completion were used for quantitative calculation of the fairness index according to data obtained by survey. The scoring method was used for quantitative calculation of other indicators. A mathematical attribute measurement model for social ex-post evaluation was established on this basis. With this model, a social ex-post evaluation of Shanghai Bund renovation project was performed using empirical analysis, and the practicality and effectiveness of the established valuation indicator system and valuation model are validated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban planners in China often face major challenges when developing or revising their city master plan in accordance with sustainability principles. They are very much trapped between policies and guidelines issued by the government and a market economy controlled by developers. The government has issued some overall recommendations for establishing eco-cities in China built on resource efficiency principles, but they lack more hands-on guidelines to be used by urban planners. Several of the most well-known eco-city projects have also encountered difficulties in the implementation phase. One problem is that the frameworks have not been developed bottom-up in a local participation process but have mainly been imported from other projects, in several cases from international experiences. This creates a gap between planning and implementation. The traditional way of planning in China is done in a sectoral way. That is, different sectors, like transport, energy, water, waste, and environment, are planned separately. This is also reflected in the lack of cooperation between the different city departments and companies responsible for energy, water, and transport. The overall aim of this study was to develop and test a new simplified framework that can guide urban planners when developing the master plan for a city or a city area aiming at becoming an eco-city. The framework developed was applied in devising a more comprehensive and integrated plan for the city of Xuzhou based on cross-sectoral planning. Meeting the future challenges of a growing population and consumption of a third planning level, the 3R level, is proposed in this paper. This is in line with a growing skepticism towards the belief in ecological modernization. In order to avoid the problem of finding exact definitions for concepts, such as sustainability and eco-city as used in China, an approach with three levels of ambition for sustainability and sustainable development was adopted. Each level of ambition requires different planning approaches related to sectoral, cross sectoral, and 3R planning. The framework will next be refined and applied in other eco-city projects in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of rail transit is expected to gather housing and jobs around metro stations to improve the urban spatial structure for sustainable development. However, evaluations of the effects of transit-oriented development (TOD) practices in Chinese cities remain limited. Based on 2019 mobile phone signaling data, this study analyzed the spatial relationship between metro station areas, urban population density, and employment density in Tianjin City, China. Kernel density estimation, the coverage rate of population and employment, and the envelope range density method for rail transit networks were used to describe the spatial relationships between rail transit and the distribution of population and employment. The concentric circle method was used to analyze the spatial variation of residential population density and employment density within the station surrounding areas. Multiple linear regressions, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and geographically weighted regression analysis were established to quantitatively evaluate the effects of metro stations on the residential population density and employment density around the stations. Results show that: (1) population and employment are significantly concentrated along the rail transit area; (2) metro stations within the suburban area, which are roughly 10 km away from the center, have the most significant aggregation effect on population and employment; and (3) employment density and the proportion of residential and commercial lands are the most influential factors in residential population density within the station's surrounding areas. These findings contribute to comprehensive spatial analysis on population and employment densities around metro stations and provide scientific support for sustainable urban development. Based on the research results, policy implications are proposed to better guide the coordinated development of rail transit and urban spatial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study builds a regional urban resilience index model through ecological density, spatial distance, and social division based on the Density, Distance and Division (3D) theory of new economic geography. In total, 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta, China, were used as the research object, and the characteristics of the urban resilience index and the driving effect of factors were investigated. The results show that: (1) the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations are at the primary level of resilience, which presents a spatial development pattern of one core and two belts; (2) there is a significant positive correlation between external resistance and internal restoration, and the restoration lags behind the resistance in most cities because of the lack of internal density effects; and (3) the driving effects of ecological density, spatial distance, and social division elements on the urban resilience level are different at the regional and district scales. Ecological density and social division are stronger at the district scale, and the spatial distance is stronger at the regional scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vegetation landscape is an important visual element of urban green space. This paper presents the results of an attempt to evaluate the visual aesthetic quality (VAQ) of urban vegetation landscape from the perspective of visitors. The research is conducted around the West Lake Scenic Area, Hangzhou, China. By quantitative survey, visual photo stimuli, and statistical analysis, the preference of visitors for different types of urban vegetation landscape in relation to their characteristics is presented, and the interactions between VAQ of urban vegetation landscape and landscape visual attributes are explored. The results demonstrate that education, place of residence, and professional background are especially significant characteristics that influence the preference of visitors for different types of urban vegetation landscape, and both strong color contrast and mixed use of evergreen and deciduous plants can increase the VAQ of urban vegetation landscape. To maintain good VAQ, it is recommended that vegetation structure, plant density, and height ratio should be carefully selected according to the type and function of vegetation landscape. The findings provide good advice for urban political determination and concepts of future vegetation landscape design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's rural revitalization strategy has created higher requirements for equalizing public services in towns and villages. In this regard, big data has been used to evaluate the accessibility of public service facilities in villages and towns (PSFVTs) to improve the spatial fairness of public services. Taking Suining County, Xuzhou, China, as an example, this study used point-of-interest (POI) data and accessibility analysis to establish a framework to evaluate the accessibility of different types of services and travel modes. The results revealed significant differences in the accessibility of PSFVTs. Specifically, the accessibility of the county center and each town center decreased for surrounding villages and towns located at the boundary areas. Among the three modes of travel, walking accessibility was found to be low, and riding could basically meet the travel needs of villages and towns. Driving exacerbated inequalities in rural residents' access to external services. Based on the results, Suining County needs to add walkable facilities for the elderly and children to improve the servicing capacity of regional facilities. This study can provide a reference for allocating public service resources and service equalization in villages and towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the large-scale implementation of China's ex situ poverty alleviation relocation (ESPAR) policy, China's poverty-alleviation migrants (PAMs) have increased significantly in a short period of time. The majority of the literature has indicated that the changes associated with resettlement in, for example, livelihood, living environment, and living standards have improved the lives of the PAMs. However, a few researchers have studied PAMs' subjective well-being (SWB) after relocation. Taking the PAMs in Anshun City, Guizhou Province of China as an example, this work used interviews and questionnaire surveys to investigate the well-being of PAMs under three resettlement models––resettlement in nearby villages and townships, resettlement in county seats, and resettlement in cities. Through a multiple linear regression model, we analyzed the SWB level and influencing factors of PAMs, and the differences in SWB under different resettlement models. The results show that: (1) the overall SWB level of PAMs is relatively high; (2) living conditions and public services, livelihoods and housing, lifestyle, and social networks all have significant impacts on the SWB of PAMs; and (3) the SWB levels of the migrants resettled in county seats is the highest, followed by resettlement in cities, and resettlement in nearby villages and townships. We also put forward relevant guiding suggestions, hoping to provide references for the sustainable development of future ESPAR projects. Moreover, we hope that this work has guiding significance for improving the mental health of PAMs and constructing healthy living cities for PAMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between urban spatial structure, economic activities, and the environment is complex and interdependent, yet there is a paucity of literature that examines green innovation from a macro perspective of the urban development mode. To fill this gap, this study employs panel data from 268 Chinese cities between 2008 and 2018 to investigate how a city's capacity for green innovation is influenced by its urban spatial structure, specifically in terms of urban compactness. Our results demonstrate a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between the compactness of urban spatial structure and green innovation, which remains robust even when using instrumental variable estimation. We find that an increase in urban compactness promotes green innovation when the compactness index value is less than 4.49 (3.74–4.10 with instrumental variable estimate). However, beyond this threshold, agglomeration diseconomies begin to outweigh agglomeration economies, and a decentralized growth pattern becomes more conducive to green innovation. These findings suggest that indiscriminate deployment of urban polycentric development plans may hinder a city's green innovation capacity. With the growth of urban population, the importance of urban environmental protection becomes more prominent. Therefore, should we stick with the compact urban development paradigm or transition to polycentric development to achieve sustainable urban growth? Using data from 238 Chinese cities from 2008 to 2018, we discover that adopting a compact spatial structure is more conducive to green innovation when the city population concentration has not yet reached a critical value, and that the latter structure is more effective when cities are overcrowded. Furthermore, we underline that for cities with difficult-to-extend metropolitan limits and excessive agglomeration, increasing institutional regulation might minimize the detrimental consequences of excessive agglomeration on city sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban expansion is the result of the comprehensive action of various social and economic factors, among which variation in land prices is regarded as the leading factor affecting the direction and intensity of urban expansion. However, few of existing studies have explored the interaction relationship between urban expansion and variations in residential land prices, which needs to be looked at urgently in both theoretical research and decision-making practice. In this study, based on theoretical analysis, a panel vector autoregression model was constructed using the data of 104 cities in China from 2001 to 2017. The results show that there is a long-term two-way causality and mutual promotion between urban expansion and increases in residential land prices. The increase in the residential land supply caused by urban expansion will restrain the rise of residential land prices, but this effect is not sustained over the long run. Both urban expansion and residential land price rises are subject to inertia, the latter to a greater extent than the former. The results also reveal that the interaction differs for cities at different stages of economic development. Based on the analysis, policy suggestions for guiding urban expansion and further exerting macrocontrol over land market are proposed. It is very necessary to study the land price of urban housing, because this issue is related to the increase in people's happiness in life. Land price change is considered the dominant factor affecting the direction and intensity of urban expansion. Therefore, studying the relationship between urban expansion and residential land price is helpful to guide the orderly and reasonable urban expansion. The purpose of this study is to clarify the detailed process of urban expansion and residential land price, so as to help policymakers to formulate corresponding policies in different links, and to combine the research conclusions with the process of making policy recommendations, in order to provide beneficial help for urban planners and decision-makers in urban planning and land price regulation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Park-and-ride (P&R) and transit-oriented development (TOD) are two major strategies to leverage the high capacity of rail transit systems in urban areas. Both rooted in the station-area land, the two strategies must be reconciled in an integrated planning framework. To this end, a bilevel programming model is proposed to tackle the competitive location issue of P&R and TOD near rail transit stations: the upper level is a 0–1 programming model, simulating governmental land-use decision-making behavior with the objective of maximizing metro patronage and minimizing vehicle kilometers traveled, or minimizing vehicle hours of delay; and the lower level is the multimodal network equilibrium model, simulating travelers' responses and assigning traffic and passenger flows in the network. The traffic analysis zones containing rail stations are divided into transit station areas and auto-oriented zones. The household residential relocation model, accessibility quantitative model, and generation-distribution joint model are used to describe the complex interactions between transit system and land-use development near rail stations. A hypothetical scenario is designed to quantitatively analyze the impacts of different station-based land-use decisions and parameters of population and employment densities. A real case study is presented to illustrate the implementation of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid growth of the economy and urbanization in China, the challenges facing cities with respect to urban function, urban fabric, and living environment are enormous. Urban renewal projects aim to address these problems and lead to lasting improvements in physical, social, economic, and environmental aspects of urban built-up areas. The complexity and uncertainty of urban renewal projects face a high possibility of failure. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to design a systematic procedure to detect the critical success factors (CSFs) of urban renewal projects and reveal the influencing mechanism among the success factors in China. To this end, 24 final success factors were identified from a literature review, followed by the application of the Delphi method and the t-test model. Subsequently, the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method was utilized to ascertain five CSFs so that project promoters and managers could effectively monitor the performance of urban renewal projects. Furthermore, corresponding countermeasures were provided to be adopted for further urban renewal projects with the three critical influence paths. Although project promoters, land ownership, and stakeholder groups vary significantly among different countries, the useful insights and research foundations from this study are equally applicable to countries other than China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government regulations on urban land use can cause urban land shortages, and hence higher prices of urban land and housing. Hong Kong, in particular, is under the innate constraints of limited land resources. But developments appear to look further restrained, due to government land use policy and regulations. However, little has been done regarding the impact of planning policies on residential market operations, when both zoning and control on land supply are employed by the government. This study attempts to fill the literature gap by developing a measure for the effectiveness of urban land use, from an analysis of land demand/supply mechanisms within a structure of stringent land supply constraints. The findings suggest that provision of low-rise public housing, in addition to the rigidity of plot ratio, appears to induce floor space shortages in some older/poorer areas, although those districts happen to have a comparatively high proportion of land for residential use. A more flexible land supply policy, particularly concerning the plot ratio, is recommended in order to minimize the impact caused by floor space shortages by encouraging private participations in redevelopments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, heat island intensity is evaluated based on an image processing algorithm, and the degree of intensive land use is determined with the entropy-weight TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution) model. In addition, the Tapio decoupling theory is further introduced for analysis of the relationship between the urban land-intensive use and heat island effect in Shijiazhuang city, China, from 1995 to 2016. According to the results, the continuously growing coverage area of the urban heat island extends from urban areas to suburban areas, and the gradually increasing heat island intensity is mainly localized along the southwest–northeast direction. The level of land-intensive use has increased from poor to good, and the rate of improvement has gradually accelerated. According to the Tapio decoupling analysis, there is a negative decoupling between intensive land use and heat island effect from 1995 to 2004, which changes to a weak decoupling from 2004 to 2016, indicating the gradual transition to a coordinative relationship. This study innovatively introduces the decoupling theory, analyzes the relationship between urban land-intensive use and heat island effect, and complements urban sustainable development from content and method. However, in terms of micro levels, this relationship requires further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many cities in China have faced profound and complex shrinkage problems, which have required new perspectives and approaches to improve understanding. In this context, this study built a framework to understand city shrinkage based on the regionalization perspective. By simulating land use with spatial relations and conducting a coupling analysis on land use efficiency and accessibility (by strength) based on the study of urban systems, 96 cities along the Yellow River were analyzed under this framework. The research found that cities with significantly lower land use efficiency tend to exhibit lower accessibility (by strength), and city shrinkage in China may be the consequence of the lower de facto accessibility and mismatch between development rights and development potential. The urban system has proven to be helpful in the research, planning, and administration of city shrinkage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there has been a rapid urbanization in China since the 1980s, the simultaneous urban shrinkage phenomenon has existed for a long time. The study of shrinking cities is particularly important for China as the current urban development has changed from physical expansion to built-up area improvement. After redefining what constitutes a city (what we term a natural city), we compared the adjusted nightlight intensity of National Polar-orbiting Partnership Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS) data between 2013 and 2016 to accurately identify shrinking cities throughout China. The results indicate that there are 2,862 redefined natural cities in China and that the total area reaches 53,275 km2, about 0.5% of the national territory. Based on this, we identified 798 shrinking cities with a total area of 13,839 km2. After analyzing the relative position of shrinking cities and internal shrinking pixels in the geometric space, the morphological characteristics of shrinking cities were systematically classified into six patterns. The majority of shrinking cities belong to scatter shrinkage, central shrinkage, and local shrinkage; only 5% are complete shrinkage; the rest are unilateral shrinkage and peripheral shrinkage. In addition, six shrinkage causes were quantitatively classified and summarized by referring to multiple-source urban data and municipal yearbooks. To enrich the methodological system for urban shrinkage, the research provides a reminder of the need to consider the other side of urbanization (i.e., dissolution of social networks) and proposes appropriate strategies and policies to address shrinkage issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]