Search

Protecting and constructing urban ecological infrastructure (UEI) is an important spatial means of improving the quality of life of urban residents, enhancing the benefits of the urban environment, and improving urban habitats. Landscape connectivity is the basis for UEI to play an ecological role. Spatial equity is an important goal for UEI to enhance urban resident happiness and sense of access and achieve environmental justice. Taking Yantai city as an example, this study analyzed the UEI morphological spatial pattern based on morphological spatial pattern analysis and calculated the spatial accessibility of UEI based on the gravity -based two-step-floating catchment area (G2SFCA) method. In addition, the study proposed the concept of accessible UEI and reflected the spatial differences in the equity of accessible UEI in urban residential areas through equity modeling that was oriented to connectivity enhancement and equity improvement. Moreover, the study integrated the location-allocation model and circuit theory to optimize the spatial layout of the existing UEI and construct an urban ecological corridor that considered landscape connectivity and leisure and recreational convenience. The results of this study showed that the proportion of bridge and island areas with connecting functions in the existing UEI in Yantai was only 10%, and they had not yet formed a complete network structure; hence, connectivity improvements were needed. In addition, the equity of accessible UEI in the residential areas of Yantai was generally good, and more than two-thirds of residents had sufficient access to UEI. However, approximately 32.7% of the residents in the four old city areas lacked a UEI distribution within their effective commuting time. Moreover, UEI layout optimization could improve the equity of accessible UEI in residential areas; however, the method of adding a new UEI was not applicable to areas with high concentrations of urban populations and stable urban spatial layouts. Furthermore, urban ecological corridors could effectively improve the connectivity and equity of UEI; however, 70% relied on existing road systems and needed to enhance their ecological attributes. The UEI equity of residential areas was highly correlated with house prices, indicating an obvious spatial injustice in the UEI layout in Yantai. Planners and governments should promote urban environmental justice through effective conservation and construction measures by incorporating established ecological and artificial infrastructures into UEI planning to achieve equitable access to UEI services for urban residents. This study provides a spatial reference and methodological support to enhance the equity and connectivity of UEI., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

In recent years, the sustainable development of resource cities has become a challenge for all countries. It aims to transform the traditional monolithic economic model and find a way to develop the city's economy and environment in harmony. In this context, we uncover the relationship between sustainable development plan of resource-based cities (SDPRC) and corporate sustainable performance and examine possible pathways for action. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) model and a series of robustness tests, our study reveals the following. First, SDPRC enhances corporate sustainability. Second, possible mechanisms for SDPRC are explored. SDPRC achieves corporate sustainability by optimal resource allocation and increasing green innovation outputs. Third, urban heterogeneity is explored and it is found that SDPRC only has a positive impact on the sustainable performance in growth and mature cities, but not in declining and regenerating cities. Finally, firm heterogeneity was examined, with SDPRC having a more positive impact on the sustainable performance of state-owned firms, large firms and heavily polluting firms. This study sheds light on the impact of SDPRC at the firm level and provides new theoretical insights for urban planning policy reform in developing countries such as China., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The harmonious coexistence of man and nature is a universally recognized standard to test the rational utilization of multifunctional territorial space, and the planning of territorial space adapted to nature is a scientific guide to balance ecological protection and human development. This study focuses on the inevitable relationship between the scale, function and pattern of territorial space utilization (TSU), and puts forward a process research framework of "background evaluation-advantage comparison-optimization conduction". Based on the evaluation of resource and environment suitability, this paper determines the scale of multifunctional territorial space through the potential conflict identification model of TSU. The location entropy method is used to identify the advantageous functions of the county level, and the matching characteristics of the research results and the current situation are obtained by comparing them with the current plan. Finally, from the county functional zoning to the regional TSU pattern, the corresponding optimization conduction path is designed to form a new development and protection pattern. The empirical results of research area show that: (1) The study area is suitable for urban construction and agricultural production as a whole. The ecological protection is mainly at the general important level, and there is a moderate potential conflict between the development and protection of territorial space. The space scale of urban construction, agricultural production and ecological protection are accounted for 8.77%, 78.71% and 12.52%, respectively. (2) The advantageous function of TSU in county-level administrative units is dominated by single advantageous function, and the number of composite advantageous functions is generally small. The advantageous functional types determined by this research have a high matching with the current plan. (3) Based on the analysis of the scale structure and functional use of territorial space, this paper defines the ecological space that should be strictly protected and the agricultural and urban space that should be moderately developed for production and construction, and sets up elastic development areas. Finally, a strategic pattern of "one corridor, two screens, three circles and four zones" is conducive to the realization of the beautiful vision of the unification of protection and development., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

City health examination and evaluation of territorial spatial planning is a new policy tool in China. However, research on city health examination and evaluation of territorial spatial planning is still in the exploratory stage in China. Guided by sustainable cities and communities (SDG11), a reasonable city health examination and evaluation index system for Xining City in Qinghai Province is constructed in this paper. The improved technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) was used to quantify the evaluation results, and the city health index was visualized using the city health examination signals and warning panel. The results show that the city health index of Xining City continuously rose from 35.76 in 2018 to 69.76 in 2020. However, it is still necessary to address the shortcomings in innovation, coordination, openness and sharing and to improve the level of city space governance in a holistic way. This study is an exploration of the methodology used in city health examination and the evaluation of territorial spatial planning in China, which can provide a foundation for the sustainable development of Xining City and also provide a case reference for other cities seeking to carry out city health examinations and evaluations of territorial spatial planning in China.

Large ecological green spaces in cities are often designated as Urban Green Hearts (GHs) to support the ecological and recreational needs of urbanites. While GHs protection and sustainable development have been a high priority for urban planning and management, ecological environment quality (EEQ) of GHs has rarely been monitored and assessed. Here, we proposed a comprehensive assessment framework for EEQ based on entropy weights and rank-sum ratios methods, and applied the framework to the world's largest GH, Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration Green Heart (CZT-GH), and its 5 km and 10 km buffer zones to examine the spatial-temporal dynamics of its EEQ from 2000 to 2019. Compared with the buffer zones, the EEQ in the CZT-GH was the best, with an annual average of 44.92 % of the area being High-grades EEQ. The restoration trend of EEQ was most conspicuous in only 8.4 % of CZT-GH, a small fraction compared with 25.1 % and 66.5 % of the CZT-GH showing deterioration trend and no change, respectively. Five factors were identified that calls for management attention: land use and cover change, spatial heterogeneity in vegetation restoration, temporal fluctuation in air quality improvement, comprehensive EEQ assessment and restoration, and capacity to cope with ecological risks. The approach, issues identified, and management measures proposed in this study should be applicable to GHs in general. The generic EEQ assessment framework and approaches developed in this study are generic and objective and therefore can be easily adapted to other regions; the procedures used to quantify the spatial and temporal changes of EEQ and identify underlying management issues provide essential information for formulating adaptive management measures of EEQ in general. SYNOPSIS: Taking the largest urban Green Heart as a case study, we established and applied a new general ecological environment quality (EEQ) evaluation system to monitor EEQ changes, identify issues, and propose management options., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Understanding how street spatial patterns are related to street vitality is conducive to enhancing effective urban and street design. Such analysis is facilitated by big data technology as it enables more accurate methods. This study cites data from street view imagery (SVI) and points of interest (POI) to assess street vitality strength after the classification of street spatial and vitality types to explore the relationship between street spatial patterns and street vitality with a further discussion on the layout features of street vitality and its strength in various street spatial patterns. First, street spatial patterns are quantified based on SVI, which are further classified using principal component analysis and cluster analysis; POI data are then introduced to identify street vitality patterns and layout, and the strength of street vitality is evaluated using spatial overlay analysis. Finally, relevance analysis is explored to cast light on the relationship between street vitality layout and street spatial patterns by overlaying street spatial pattern, street vitality types, and street vitality strength in the grid cells. This paper takes the urban area of Guiyang, China, as an example and the analysis shows that a pattern is discovered in Guiyang regarding the layout of street vitality types and vitality strengths across different street spatial patterns; compact street spaces should be prioritized in designing street space renovation; and cultural leisure vitality is most adaptive to street spatial patterns. Based on big data and using grids to understand the intrinsic relationship between street spatial patterns and the type and strength of street vitality, this paper brings more options to urban street studies in terms of perspective and methodology.

During the development of the urban water system from 1.0 to 3.0, the impervious surface area gradually increased, hindering the natural infiltration and self-purification process of urban rainwater, resulting in serious urban water pollution, urban waterlogging in the rainy season, and groundwater problems. Since water will seep into the ground, serious water pollution will cause damage to the ground. Therefore, in dealing with urban rainwater problems, we want to use the sponge's ability to absorb and store water to build our cities into sponge cities. In this paper, we have constructed a sponge city planning and information system development based on geographic information fuzzy processing. We use differentiated fuzzy processing methods to eliminate classified information to achieve a perfect combination with nearby images and use ordinary fuzzy processing methods to solve the problem of nonconfidential information. This paper discusses the impact of natural topography on the planning and construction of sponge cities, including whether natural topography will affect rainwater, whether it will affect the distribution of different strata, and whether it will affect the utilization of groundwater resources. The basic functions of this platform are provided by a series of functions of GIS, and multiple modules are developed according to management requirements. The initial state of street view data is a lot of fisheye lens photos and corresponding point location information, which are displayed online after data preprocessing, detection information, editing information, and blurring processing., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Mingxin Gan and Tongfang Li.)

The functional zoning of land comprehensive consolidation and the selection of consolidation paths are the key content of the current land and space planning, and it is also an important measure to achieve regional sustainable development. At present, the research system on land comprehensive consolidation is not yet mature. The previous research area is relatively small and not representative, and an effective method system has not been formed. Research on the selection of functional zoning and a consolidation path is also relatively scarce. There is an urgent need to construct the theory and method system of land comprehensive consolidation functional zoning and consolidation path selection. Taking Dongying City in China as an example, this paper constructs a zoning index system from four aspects including natural conditions, location advantages, social economy and land use. The entropy method is used to determine the weights, and GIS spatial data visualization is used to analyze the spatial distribution characteristics of the index system. Based on the analysis, the grey constellation clustering method is used to divide the study area into four types of land comprehensive consolidation functional areas, and the results of functional zoning are adjusted according to the ranking of comprehensive index values, the principle of maximum similarity, and the continuity of natural space. The research results show that: ① There are 10 functional zonings for urban development and ecological protection land consolidation, and the main consolidation path should be the ecological country park consolidation model, which can effectively serve the urban ecological construction. ② There are nine functional zonings for rural development and cultivated land conservation consolidation, and their consolidation path should be based on a comprehensive rural improvement model that enhances the quality of the village and the development, utilization and protection of cultivated land resources. ③ There are 18 functional zonings for cultivated land improvement and ecological protection land consolidation, and the main consolidation path should focus on the cultivated land ecological improvement mode that emphasizes the quality of cultivated land and the improvement of regional ecological functions. ④ There are four functional zonings for ecological conservation and fallow recuperative land consolidation, and their main consolidation path should be the land ecological restoration and improvement model of construction land reclamation, cultivated land ecological conservation, and conversion of farmland to forest and grassland. The research results can provide references for Dongying City to formulate land and space planning, and can be extended to the design of comprehensive land remediation projects in other regions. It is of great significance to promote regional sustainable and scientific development.

The land use planning and management of urban fringe areas have become major governmental agendas under the background of continuing periurbanization processes. Quantifying land use functions (LUFs) and their interactions as rationales for spatial planning can aid in formulating a more effective and sustainable land use management system. Considering that most of the previous research on LUFs focused on large-scale regions, research on local-scale districts such as urban fringe is still limited. Therefore, the objective of this work is to map the spatial distribution of LUFs and their level of provision around an urban fringe area, so as to identify LUFs synergies and trade-offs in relation to urban expansion and environmental protection planning. To achieve this target, we have proposed an improved LUFs classification system that was suitable for small-scale regions. Fine scale multivariate datasets were used to meet the practical requirements of spatial planning. The urban fringe areas of Binzhou city in China was taken as a case study to quantify and analyze nine kinds of sub-land use functions. The interactions among LUFs and their cold-hot spots were measured through Spearman correlation analysis and bivariate local Moran's I respectively. The results demonstrated a heterogeneous spatial pattern of multiple LUFs and the diverse interactions among them. The social production function presented an obvious regional distribution, the residents' living functions were greatly affected by the radiation of the urban central areas, and the ecological regulation functions were closely related to the land use types. According to the LUFs clustering results, we proposed two spatial planning-zoning schemes based on the land use function and human utilization intensity. The integrative approach and the proposal of functional zones developed in this paper are applicable to provide a new perspective for spatial planning and peri-urban land use management., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work presented in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Three-dimensional landscape patterns are an effective means to study the relationship between landscape pattern evolution and eco-environmental effects. This paper selects six districts in Xi'an as the study area to examine the spatial distribution characteristics of the three-dimensional architectural landscape in the city's main urban area using three-dimensional information on the buildings in 2020 with the support of GIS. In this study, two new architectural landscape indices-landscape height variable coefficient and building rugosity index-were employed in landscape pattern analysis, whilst a system of rigorous and comprehensive three-dimensional architectural landscape metrics was established using principal component analysis. A mathematical model of weighted change of landscape metrics based on the objective weighting method was applied to carry out scale analysis of the landscape patterns. Spatial statistical analysis and spatial autocorrelation analysis were conducted to comprehensively study the differentiation of three-dimensional architectural landscape spatial patterns. The results show that the characteristic scale of the three-dimensional landscape pattern in Xi'an's main urban area is around 8 km. Moreover, the three-dimensional landscape of the buildings in this area is spatially positively correlated, exhibiting a high degree of spatial autocorrelation whilst only showing small spatial differences. The layout of the architectural landscape pattern is disorderly and chaotic within the second ring, whilst the clustering of patch types occurs near the third ring. Moreover, the building density in the Beilin, Lianhu, and Xincheng districts is large, the building height types are rich, and the roughness of the underlying surface is high, such that these are key areas to be improved through urban renewal. The height, volume, density, morphological heterogeneity, and vertical roughness of the architectural landscape vary amongst functional areas within the study area. This paper is the first to apply the study of spatial heterogeneity of three-dimensional landscape patterns to Xi'an. It does so in order to provide a quantitative basis for urban landscape ecological design for urban renewal and the rational planning of built-up areas, which will promote the sustainable development of the city's urban environment., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

With the advancement of urbanization and the impact of industrial pollution, the issue of urban ventilation has attracted increasing attention. Research on urban ventilation corridors is a hotspot in the field of urban planning. Traditional studies on ventilation corridors mostly focus on qualitative or simulated research on urban climate issues such as the intensified urban heat island effect, serious environmental pollution, and insufficient climate adaptability. Based on the high-precision urban remote sensing image data obtained by aeromagnetic oblique photography, this paper calculates the frontal area density of the city with reference to the urban wind statistics. Based on the existing urban patterns, template matching technology was used to automatically excavate urban ventilation corridors, which provides scientific and reasonable algorithmic support for the rapid construction of potential urban ventilation corridor paths. It also provides technical methods and decision basis for low-carbon urban planning, ecological planning and microclimate optimization design. This method was proved to be effective through experiments in Deqing city, Zhejiang Province, China.

The basic premise of regional ecological construction would be to scientifically and effectively grasp the characteristics of land use change and its impact on landscape ecological risk. The research objects of this paper are the typical areas of the Yellow River Basin in China and "process-change-drive" as the logical main line. Moreover, this paper is based on multi-period land use remote sensing data from 2000 to 2020, the regional land use change process and influencing factors are identified, the temporal and spatial evolution and response process of landscape ecological risk are discussed, and the land use zoning control strategy to reduce ecological risk is put forward. The results indicated: (1) The scale and structure of land use show the characteristics of "many-to-one" and "one-to-many"; (2) the process of land use change is affected by the alternation of multiple factors. The natural environment and socio-economic factors dominate in the early stage and the location and policy factors have a significant impact in the later stage; (3) the overall landscape ecological risk level and conversion rate show a trend of "high in the southeast, low in the northwest", shift from low to high and landscape ecological risks gradually increase; and (4) in order to improve the regional ecological safety and according to the characteristics of landscape ecological risk and spatial heterogeneity, we should adopt the management and control zoning method and set different levels of control intensity (from key intensity to strict intensity to general intensity), and develop differentiated land use control strategies.

This paper proposes a framework for a layout evaluation of urban public sports facilities. First, the buffer analysis method is used to measure the service level of public sports facilities. The study findings indicate that the overall service level of public sports facilities presents the spatial characteristics of a central agglomeration, and the value of the service level diffuses outward from high to low. There is evident spatial heterogeneity in the layout of public sports facilities in Hangzhou. Second, the Gini coefficient, Lorenz curve, and location entropy are employed to measure the equity of the distribution among spatial units and the intradistrict disparity. The results show a mismatch between the spatial distribution of the facilities and the distribution of the permanent population. The patterns of distribution of the location entropy classes of Hangzhou can be divided into three types: balanced, alternating, and divergent districts. The method in this paper is effective in measuring spatial equity and visualizing it. it has a certain degree of systemicity, universality and operability. At the same time, this method can compare the diachronic characteristics of the same city and the synchronic characteristics of different cities, which has universal application value., Competing Interests: The authors have read the journal’s policy and have the following competing interests: Tonghua Lv became a paid employee of Hangzhou Xuelian Land Planning Co., LTD while working on this study. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products associated with this research to declare. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

The 15-minute community life circle (15min-CLC) strategy is one of Shanghai's important methods for building a global city and facing a society with a more diverse population structure in the future. In the existing research, the balance between the construction of the life circle and the needs of the people in the life circle still needs to be further fulfilled. This paper is based on the city's multi-source large data set including 2018 AutoNavi POI (Point of Interests), OSM (OpenStreetMap) road network data and LandScan population data set, and evaluates the current status of Shanghai's 15min-CLC through the fusion of kernel density estimation, service area analysis and other statistical models and proposes relevant optimization suggestions. The results show that there are the following shortcomings: (1) From the perspective of different types of infrastructure service facilities, the spatial construction of Shanghai's overall life service facilities and shopping service facilities needs to be optimized. (2) From the perspective of comprehensive evaluation, the comprehensive service convenience of infrastructure service facilities in the downtown area is relatively high, while the comprehensive service convenience of urban infrastructure service facilities in the suburbs and outer suburbs is relatively low; The diversity of basic service facilities in the 15min-CLC in the downtown area is more consistent with the population distribution; However, in the peripheral areas of the urban area, too many infrastructure service facilities have been constructed. Based on the above shortcomings and the perspective of supply and demand matching, relevant optimization strategies are proposed in different regions and different types of infrastructure service facilities: (1) focus on the construction of basic service facilities in the urban fringe and urban-rural areas, improve the full coverage of the basic service facilities, and appropriately reduce the number of basic service facilities in the downtown area. (2) The development of community business models can be used to promote the development of new life service facilities and shopping service facilities. (3) Improve community medical institutions through facility function conversion, merger and reconstruction, etc. (4) Optimize the hierarchical basic service facility system and improve the population supporting facilities of basic service facilities in the 15min-CLC. This paper incorporates people's needs and concerns on the living environment into the 15min-CLC evaluation model, and uses Shanghai as an example to conduct research, summarizes the existing shortcomings, and proposes corresponding optimization strategies based on the matching of supply and demand. This article attempts to explore a replicable 15min-CLC planning model, so that it can be extended to the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, to provide reference for further research on the 15min-CLC, and to promote urban construction under the concept of sustainable development., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The accurate identification of urban functional areas is of great significance for optimizing urban spatial structure, rationally allocating spatial elements, and promoting the sustainable development of the city. This paper proposes a method to precisely identify urban functional areas by coupling Open Street Map (OSM) and Point of Interest (POI) data. It takes the central urban area of Hangzhou as a case study to analyze the spatial distribution characteristics of the functional areas. The results show that: (1) The central urban areas of Hangzhou are divided into 21 functional areas (6 single functional areas, 14 mixed functional areas and 1 comprehensive functional area). (2) The single functional areas and the mixed functional areas show the geographical distribution characteristics of the looping stratification, which means "Core-periphery" differentiation is obvious, and the comprehensive functional area is relatively scattered. (3) The mixed degree of regional function with ecological function and production function is low while comprehensive functional areas are usually associated with higher potential and vitality. (4) The identification results are in great agreement with the actual situation of Hangzhou central urban area, and the method is feasible. Therefore, this paper can provide a reference for urban development planning and management., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Traffic networks have been proved to be fractal systems. However, previous studies mainly focused on monofractal networks, while complex systems are of multifractal structure. This paper is devoted to exploring the general regularities of multifractal scaling processes in the street network of 12 Chinese cities. The city clustering algorithm is employed to identify urban boundaries for defining comparable study areas; box-counting method and the direct determination method are utilized to extract spatial data; the least squares calculation is employed to estimate the global and local multifractal parameters. The results showed multifractal structure of urban street networks. The global multifractal dimension spectrums are inverse S-shaped curves, while the local singularity spectrums are asymmetric unimodal curves. If the moment order q approaches negative infinity, the generalized correlation dimension will seriously exceed the embedding space dimension 2, and the local fractal dimension curve displays an abnormal decrease for most cities. The scaling relation of local fractal dimension gradually breaks if the q value is too high, but the different levels of the network always keep the scaling reflecting singularity exponent. The main conclusions are as follows. First, urban street networks follow multifractal scaling law, and scaling precedes local fractal structure. Second, the patterns of traffic networks take on characteristics of spatial concentration, but they also show the implied trend of spatial deconcentration. Third, the development space of central area and network intensive areas is limited, while the fringe zone and network sparse areas show the phenomenon of disordered evolution. This work may be revealing for understanding and further research on complex spatial networks by using multifractal theory., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

For the complicated operation process, many risk factors, and long cycle of urban logistics, it is difficult to manage the security of urban logistics and it enhances the risk. Therefore, to study a set of effective management mode for the safe operation of urban logistics and improve the risk prediction mechanism, is the primary research item of urban logistics security management. This paper summarizes the risk factors to public security in the process of urban logistics, including pick up, warehouse storage, transport, and the end distribution. Generalized regression neural network (GRNN) is combined with particle swarm optimization (PSO) to predict accidents, and the Apriori algorithm is used to analyze the combination of high-frequency risk factors. The results show that the method of combining GRNN with PSO is effective in accident prediction and has a powerful generalization ability. It can prevent the occurrence of unnecessary urban logistics public accidents, improve the ability of relevant departments to deal with emergency incidents, and minimize the impact of urban logistics accidents on social and public security., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Urban planning and design in the 21st century is increasingly focusing on sustainability, illustrated by the proliferation of greener cities. While operational definitions and the actual planning of these cities can vary considerably (e.g., eco cities and low carbon cities), conceptually, at least, these terms overlap, particularly with regard to how they attempt to achieve both greener infrastructural design and healthier human lifestyles. This paper presents the findings of survey-based research carried out within Lingang New Town in Shanghai in 2019. In the cities of the Global North, the interplay between green infrastructural provision and public health has been of interest, especially in the context of social inequalities; however, there is little research from rapidly urbanizing countries where green urbanism is being increasingly promoted. Using this newly constructed example, we identified a clear positive correlation between moving to a green city and the adoption of healthier lifestyles. The structural equation modelling results suggest that behaviors around the use of green space as well as perceptions of different green space have notable impacts on residents' physical health, measured by body mass index (BMI). The findings further illustrate systemic inequalities among private housing, rental housing and public housing typologies with regard to the distribution of health benefits.

The traditional full-scan method is commonly used for identifying critical links in road networks. This method simulates each link to be closed iteratively and measures its impact on the efficiency of the whole network. It can accurately identify critical links. However, in this method, traffic assignments are conducted under all scenarios of link disruption, making this process prohibitively time-consuming for large-scale road networks. This paper proposes an approach considering the traffic flow betweenness index (TFBI) to identify critical links, which can significantly reduce the computational burden compared with the traditional full-scan method. The TFBI consists of two parts: traffic flow betweenness and endpoint origin-destination (OD) demand (rerouted travel demand). There is a weight coefficient between these two parts. Traffic flow betweenness is established by considering the shortest travel-time path betweenness, link traffic flow and total OD demand. The proposed approach consists of the following main steps. First, a sample road network is selected to calibrate the weight coefficient between traffic flow betweenness and endpoint OD demand in the TFBI using the network robustness index. This index calculates changes in the whole-system travel time due to each link's closure under the traditional full-scan method. Then, candidate critical links are pre-selected according to the TFBI value of each link. Finally, a given number of real critical links are identified from the candidate critical links using the traditional full-scan method. The applicability and computational efficiency of the TFBI-based approach are demonstrated for the road network in Changchun, China., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

As a key element in China's spatial planning, the development zoning of land space has become a focus of China's current activity. During its rapid social and economic development, China has faced severe and diverse challenges regarding sustainable development, such as farmland occupation, environmental degradation, urban land disorder expansion, etc. Against this backdrop, research on the linkage between resource-environmental carrying capacity (RECC) and the development zoning of land space in the process of sustainable development has received increased attention, and an accurate evaluation of the RECC would provide useful guidance for Chinese policy makers to carry out the development zoning of land space. This paper uses Henan Province as an example to construct a comprehensive evaluation model of "resource carrying capacity (RCC)-eco-environmental carrying capacity (EECC)-socio-economic carrying capacity (SECC)", which calculates the level of RECC in a provincial area. In addition, this paper designs a correlation model between the RECC and the development zoning of land space, which uses a three-dimensional magic cube evaluation model to analyze the development zoning layout of land space. The results showed that a geographical pattern exists, where in the southwestern areas of Henan Province have a higher RECC than the central and northeastern areas. The results also indicated that the land space patterns of Henan Province can be divided into seven types of areas through a three-dimensional magic cube evaluation model, which can better reflect the spatial differentiation characteristics of the comprehensive index of RECC. The results of this study offer an important reference for policy-makers to make decisions and also provide a scientific and pragmatic basis for the formulation of sustainable development strategies., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Bike-sharing systems (BSS) have widely spread over many cities in the world as an environmentally friendly means to reduce air pollution and traffic congestion. This paper focuses on the bike-sharing rebalancing problem (BRP), which consists of two aspects: determining desired demands at each station and designing routes to redistribute bikes among stations. For the first task, we firstly apply the random forest, a very efficient machine learning algorithm, to forecast desired demands for each station, which can be easily implemented with distributed computing. For the second task, it belongs to the broad class of the vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery (VRPPD). In most existing settings, all of the demands being strictly satisfied can lead to longer routes and add operational costs. In this paper, we propose a new model with unserved demands by relaxing demands satisfying constraints. Then, we design a distributed ant colony optimization (ACO) based algorithm with some specific modifications to increase its efficiency for the proposed model. We propose to use the percentage of average cost saving per bike as a metric to evaluate the performance of our method on cost-reducing and compare with existing methods and best-known values. Computational results on benchmarks show the advantage of our approach. Finally, we provide a real case study of BSS in Hangzhou, China, with insightful elaborations., Competing Interests: The commercial company, Invesco Great Wall Fund Management, Shenzhen, China, does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Respiratory health is a focus of interdisciplinary studies involving urban planning and public health. Studies have noted that urban built environments have impacts on respiratory health by influencing air quality and human behavior such as physical activity. The aim of this paper was to explore the impact of urban built environments on respiratory health, taking chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as one of the typical respiratory diseases for study. A cross-sectional study was conducted including all cases (N = 1511) of death from COPD in the high-density Jing'an district of Shanghai from 2001 to 2010. Proxy variables were selected to measure modifiable features of urban built environments within this typical high-density district in Shanghai. A geographically weighted regression (GWR) model was used to explore the effects of the built environment on the mortality of COPD and the geographical variation in the effects. This study found that land use mix, building width-height ratio, frontal area density, and arterial road density were significantly correlated to the mortality of COPD in high-density urban area. By identifying built environment elements adjustable by urban planning and public policy, this study proposes corresponding environmental intervention for respiratory health.

This paper defines five criteria and identifies 21 indicators for the modernization level of a province or a city in modern China. It collects raw index data from 31 provinces in China, between 2007 and 2017, and introduces formula for its dimensionless processing. An improved entropy method (IEM) is proposed for the evaluation of the modernization in urban areas, based on the five criteria and 21 indicators. A practical study was implemented in Anhui province employing the said IEM. The results demonstrate that the IEM is being effective in evaluating the modernization level in urban areas.

The loss of urban vitality is an important problem in the development of urban central areas. Analyzing the correlation between urban built environment and urban vitality supports urban planning and design. However, current research excludes the study of how consistent built environment factors affect urban vitality of cities with different development situations. Therefore, using social media check-in data, this paper measures neighborhood vibrancy in urban central areas in Beijing and Chengdu, China. Four levels of spatial information were used to measure the built environment: regulatory planning management unit (RPMU), land use, road network, and building. Regression model is used to quantify the correlation between urban vitality and the built environment of these two cities. The study found a strong correlation between built environment factors and urban vitality. Among the built environment factors, points of interest (POI) diversity and public transport accessibility indicators were strongly positively correlated with neighborhood vibrancy. However, the density indicators had totally different effects on urban vitality of cities with different development situations, which is excluded in existing studies. This research strengthens the practical understanding of the compact city concept, and can support the design and planning of urban built environment.

The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region is one of the most densely populated and economically developed areas in China, which provides an ideal environment with which to study the various strategies, such as compact and polycentric development advocated by researchers to reduce air pollution. Using the data of YRD cities from 2011-2017, the spatial durbin model (SDM) is presented to investigate how compactness (in terms of urban density, jobs-housing balance, and urban centralization) and poly-centricity (in terms of the number of centers and polycentric cluster) affect PM 10 emissions. After controlling some variables, the results suggest that more jobs-housing-balanced and centralized compactness tends to decrease emissions, while poly-centricity by developing too many centers is expected to result in more pollutant emissions. The effect of high-density compactness is more controversial. In addition, for cities with more private car ownerships (>10 million within cities), enhancing the polycentric cluster by achieving a more balanced population distribution between the traditional centers and sub-centers could reduce emissions, whereas this mitigated emissions effect may be limited. The difference between our study and western studies suggests that the correlation between high-density compactness and air pollution vary with the specific characteristics and with spatial planning implications, as this paper concludes.

Background: In China, traditional energy planning is subordinate to city planning, with a primary purpose of meeting the energy demand in urban areas by planning and designing an energy system. However, most of the current energy planning in China pertains to a low-efficient system and proves to be unfriendly to the environment, which is no longer appropriate for the future development of modern industrial parks and cities. Methods: A combined cooling, heating, gas and power energy network with distributed cogeneration units and renewable energy sources provides an effective solution to the related problems. In this paper, a new energy planning method for the Eco-City is proposed, which is based on a Distributed Energy Network (DEN) system. The designed method of a four-stage energy integration mode is implemented, which includes prediction of the energy demand, optimization of the energy utilization, matching of the energy supply and the recovery side. Based on the planning and designing of the DEN, the technical and economic analysis draw reasonable results. Results: As implemented in the practical case of the Sino-German Eco-Park, the procedure of the proposed energy planning method is comprehensively explained. Finally, by reviewing the planning, design and operation, the current state and problems of the Sino-German Eco-Park are described. Conclusions: A new energy design for Eco-Parks is developed as a result of a thorough analysis of the planning process, which integrates city planning and energy planning together and provides energy solutions for high-level cities and industrial parks. The four-stage integrated energy model provides a guideline for the entire process and its detailed steps. Relevant experiences and lessons from the energy planning of the Sino-German Eco-Park are of significance for supporting similar projects in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries such as China are undergoing rapid urban expansion and land use change. Urban expansion regulation has been a significant research topic recently, especially in Eastern China, with a high urbanization level. Among others, roads are an important spatial determinant of urban expansion and have significant influences on human activities, the environment, and socioeconomic development. Understanding the urban road network expansion pattern and its corresponding social and environmental effects is a reasonable way to optimize comprehensive urban planning and keep the city sustainable. This paper analyzes the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban road growth and uses spatial statistic models to describe its spatial patterns in rapid developing cities through a case study of Nanjing, China. A kernel density estimation model is used to describe the spatiotemporal distribution patterns of the road network. A geographically weighted regression (GWR) is applied to generate the social and environmental variance influenced by the urban road network expansion. The results reveal that the distribution of the road network shows a morphological character of two horizontal and one vertical concentration lines. From 2012 to 2016, the density of the urban road network increased significantly and developed some obvious focus centers. The development of the urban road network had a strong correlation with socioeconomic and environmental factors, which however, influenced it at different degrees in different districts. This study enhances the understanding of the effects of socio-economic and environmental factors on urban road network expansion, a significant indicator of urban expansion, in different circumstances. The study will provide useful understanding and knowledge to planning departments and other decision makers to maintain sustainable development.

As a main type of urban construction land, urban-industrial land is used to provide the judging criteria for construction land scale in the planning period when urban population, industrial development, investment scale, and other conditions are uncertain in China; however, research on expected indicator such as urban-industrial land in overall land use plan mainly focuses on qualitative analysis; quantitative analysis research has not yet been carried out. Using MATLAB R2016a software modeling tools to establish GM (1, 1) model and RBF neural network model, respectively, this paper predicted the demand of urban-industrial land in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. Comparing the predicated results with the actual value of urban-industrial land in Beijing, Tianjin, and 11 prefecture-level cities in Hebei Province, we determined the reasonable prediction model for urban-industrial land after testing the accuracy of the two prediction models. The results showed that the RBF neural network model was the more reasonable prediction model for urban-industrial land. Using the predicted results of the RBF neural network model, combining expected indicators of overall land use plan (2006-2020) in Beijing and Tianjin, as well as 11 prefecture-level cities in Hebei Province in the planning target year, determined remaining usable time of urban-industrial land. Finally, combined with the actual scale of urban-industrial land in 2015 and the predicated scale of urban-industrial land in 2020, the remaining usable time of each city's urban-industrial land was calculated in terms of the average annual growth rate of urban-industrial land from 2009 to 2015. According to the comparative relationship between the remaining usable time and the remaining time of the overall land use plan (5 years), urban-industrial lands were divided into three kinds of regulation zones: reasonable reduction zone, optimized adjustment zone, and core development zone. The policy implications for urban-industrial land in each regulation zone were also provided. This paper can provide reference for regulation zoning of urban-industrial land in developing countries and regions.

Urban planning has been proven and is expected to promote public health by improving the built environment. With a focus on respiratory health, this paper explores the impact of the built environment on the incidence of lung cancer and its planning implications. While the occurrence of lung cancer is a complicated and cumulative process, it would be valuable to discover the potential risks of the built environment. Based on the data of 52,009 lung cancer cases in Shanghai, China from 2009 to 2013, this paper adopts spatial analytical methods to unravel the spatial distribution of lung cancer cases. With the assistance of geographic information system and Geo-Detector, this paper identifies certain built environments that are correlated with the distribution pattern of lung cancer cases in Shanghai, including the percentage of industrial land (which explains 28% of the cases), location factors (11%), and the percentages of cultivated land and green space (6% and 5%, respectively). Based on the quantitative study, this paper facilitates additional consideration and planning intervention measures for respiratory health such as green buffering. It is an ecological study to illustrate correlation that provides approaches for further study to unravel the causality of disease incidence and the built environment.

Different historical backgrounds and planning ideas have created different urban streetscape fabrics. The patterns of the streetscape fabric have affected urban microclimate factors and formed a unique local microclimate. This paper simulated the microclimatic effects in four study areas with different streetscape fabrics in Shanghai to compare the microclimatic conditions with a system of multi-dimensional street morphological indices using ENVI-met 4.3 software. At the street network fabric level, the results showed that streets with a south⁻north orientation, a small junction spacing, and a street network with better connectivity were conducive to mitigation of the air temperature heating intensity in the street space and improving the ventilation effect; at the street-site level: The indices of Build-to-line ratio (BL), Height-width ratio (H/W), and Sky view factors (SVF) played different roles that affected the distribution characteristics of the microclimate factors. The BL value of the streets between 0.5 and 0.8 generally had a positive relationship with the air temperature. The SVF value of the streets was positively correlated with the microclimate index, while the H/W values were negatively correlated with them. The morphological indicators of different levels also had a synergistic effect on the microclimatic impact of the street space fabric. This comparative analysis of microclimatic characteristics at the medium spatial scale will provide useful suggestions for urban climate adaptability in urban spatial morphology optimization in future urbanization development.

Neoliberal conservation has recently become a topic of academic research and a method of practice within the context of globalization. Less attention has been given to how neoliberal conservation has been practiced at the urban scale. This paper draws on the concept of 'urban-growth-oriented green grabbing' to capture the multidimensionality of the reasoning and process of ecological conservation in an urban growth context. It focuses on two ecological spatial protection plans for the DaPeng Peninsula in the city of Shenzhen, China. Through empirical investigation, this article traces the political economy of these plans and draws out the insights they offer regarding theories of urban environmentalism. The empirical results show that the ecological conservation plans are best understood as 'green grabbing' that has been achieved by land transfer and spatial interest redistribution. Conceptually, the paper provides further evidence of the process of neoliberal conservation within the urban context.

The city center planning based on the ecological security pattern of the landscape plays an important role in protecting the healthy operation of the urban ecological environment. This paper takes the city of Harbin of Heilongjiang Province as the target of research, the data during 2011 and 2012 relating to the overall urban planning of Harbin as the data source, and the extraction of the study domain based on the principle of landscape ecology as the ecological source. Also, we take the cumulative cost distance model to create the ecological corridor and the ecological nodes, build the spatial pattern of the city center based on the ecological security pattern of the landscape, and develop the strategy to protect the ecological security pattern of the city center landscape. This study has a pivotal reference value for guiding the city's overall planning and protecting the ecological environment of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Land use planning is always officially implemented as an effective tool to control urban development and protect farmland. However, its impact on land use change remains untested in China. Using a case study of Hang-Jia-Hu region, the main objective of this paper was to investigate the influence of different land use spatial control schemes on farmland conversion and urban development. Comparisons of farmland conversion and urban development patterns between the urban planning area and the non-urban planning area were characterized by using remote sensing, geographical information systems, and landscape metrics. Results indicated that farmland conversion in the non-urban planning area was more intensive than that in the urban planning area, and that farmland patterns was more fragmented in the non-urban planning area. Built-up land patterns in the non-urban planning area showed a trend of aggregation, while those in the urban planning area had a dual trend of fragmentation and aggregation. Existing built-up areas had less influence on built-up land sprawl in the non-urban planning area than that in the urban planning area. Built-up land sprawl in the form of continuous development in the urban planning area led to farmland conversion; and in the non-urban planning area, built-up land sprawl in the form of leapfrogging development resulted in farmland areal declines and fragmentation. We argued that it is a basic requirement to integrate land use plans in urban and non-urban planning areas for land use planning and management.

The suitability assessment of regional construction land is one of the important prerequisites for the spatial arrangement in regional planning, and also, the important foundation for the reasonable utilization of regional land resources. With the support of GIS, and by using the regional comprehensive strength and spatial accessibility analysis and the eco-environmental sensitivity analysis, this paper quantitatively analyzed the development potential and its ecological limitation of the central and southern parts of Hebei Province. Besides, based on the cost-benefit analysis, the potential-limitation model was accordingly developed, and the three land suitability scenarios under different developmental concepts were captured through the interaction matrix. The results indicated that both the comprehensive strength and the development potential of the study area showed a primacy distribution pattern, and presented an obvious pole-axis spatial pattern. The areas with higher eco-environmental sensitivity were mainly distributed in the west regions, while those with lower eco-environmental sensitivity were in the east regions. Regional economic development concept had important effects on the regional ecological security pattern and urban growth. The newly developed principles and methods for the land suitability assessment in this paper could not only scientifically realize the spatial grid of regional development potential and capture the future land development trend and spatial distribution, but also provide scientific basis and effective ways for urban and regional planning to realize region 'smart growth' and 'smart conservation'.

Based on the QuickBird remote sensing images and with the support of GIS, this paper analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics of land use change and its driving forces in old industrial area of Tiexi, Shenyang City of Liaoning Province in 2000-2010. During the study period, the industrial and mining warehouse land pattern had the greatest change, evolving from the historical pattern of residential land in the south and of industrial land in the north into residential land as the dominant land use pattern. In the last decade, the residential land area increased by 9%, mainly transferred from the industrial and mining warehouse land located in the north of Jianshe Road, while the industrial and mining warehouse land area decreased by 20%. The land areas for the commercial service and for the administrative and public services were increased by 1.3% and 3.1%, respectively. The land area for construction had a greater change, with an overall change rate being 76.9%. The land use change rate in 2000-2005 was greater than that in 2005-2010. National development strategies and policies, regional development planning, administrative reform, and industrial upgrading were the main driving forces of the land use change in old industrial area of Tiexi.

Irrespective of which side is taken in the densification-sprawl debate, insights into the relationship between urban green space coverage and urbanization have been recognized as essential for guiding sustainable urban development. However, knowledge of the relationships between socio-economic variables of urbanization and long-term green space change is still limited. In this paper, using simple regression, hierarchical partitioning and multi-regression, the temporal trend in green space coverage and its relationship with urbanization were investigated using data from 286 cities between 1989 and 2009, covering all provinces in mainland China with the exception of Tibet. We found that: [1] average green space coverage of cities investigated increased steadily from 17.0% in 1989 to 37.3% in 2009; [2] cities with higher recent green space coverage also had relatively higher green space coverage historically; [3] cities in the same region exhibited similar long-term trends in green space coverage; [4] eight of the nine variables characterizing urbanization showed a significant positive linear relationship with green space coverage, with 'per capita GDP' having the highest independent contribution (24.2%); [5] among the climatic and geographic factors investigated, only mean elevation showed a significant effect; and [6] using the seven largest contributing individual factors, a linear model to predict variance in green space coverage was constructed. Here, we demonstrated that green space coverage in built-up areas tended to reflect the effects of urbanization rather than those of climatic or geographic factors. Quantification of the urbanization effects and the characteristics of green space development in China may provide a valuable reference for research into the processes of urban sprawl and its relationship with green space change., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Population is the most active factor affecting city development. To understand the distribution characteristics of urban population is of significance for making city policy decisions and for optimizing the layout of various urban infrastructures. In this paper, the information of the residential buildings in Shenyang urban area was extracted from the QuickBird remote sensing images, and the spatial distribution characteristics of the population within the Third-Ring Road of the City were analyzed, according to the social and economic statistics data. In 2010, the population density in different types of residential buildings within the Third-Ring Road of the City decreased in the order of high-storey block, mixed block, mixed garden, old multi-storey building, high-storey garden, multi-storey block, multi-storey garden, villa block, shanty, and villa garden. The vacancy rate of the buildings within the Third-Ring Road was more than 30%, meaning that the real estate market was seriously overstocked. Among the five Districts of Shenyang City, Shenhe District had the highest potential population density, while Tiexi District and Dadong District had a lower one. The gravity center of the City and its five Districts was also analyzed, which could provide basic information for locating commercial facilities and planning city infrastructure.

Urbanization is the most drastic form of land use change, which affects the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and services far beyond the limits of cities. Based on the land use data in three time periods and by the method of landscape pattern analysis, this paper analyzed the change characteristics of the spatiotemporal pattern of urbanization in the four Banners of East Erdos at different spatial scales. Urbanization had profound effects on the local ecology, society, and economics. The landscape as a whole became more fragmented and complex, and different patch types exhibited distinctive spatial characteristics and were affected to different degrees at class-level. Desert and urban land varied greater, and cropland was most affected by urbanization. Resources factors, increase of urban population, and development of economy were the main socio-economic driving factors to the changes in the local landscape spatiotemporal pattern of urbanization.

In this paper, the regional land main-function division of Guangdong Province was studied, based on the statistical indices of 21 cities in the Province in 2008 and the central place theory, and by the methods of spatial gravity center and fuzzy clustering. In 2008, cities Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shantou, Foshan, Dongguan, and Chaozhou were the prior developed zones, lying in gravity center region and well exerted their radiating role in developed economy, being the central region for the development of economy in the Province. Cities Heyuan, Shanwei, Jiangmen, Yangjiang, Zhanjiang, Maoming, and Zhaoqing were the restrictively developed zones. These cities had lower centrality index and worse economic base, and thereby, their ecological restoration and protection should be strengthened to make these cities be established into an eco-benefit ensured region. Cities Zhuhai, Shaoguan, Meizhou, Huizhou, Zhongshan, Qingyuan, Jieyang and Yunfu were the key developed zones, which should undertake the transfer of the industries from prior developed zones of Guangdong and limit the transfer of population from restrictively developed zones of the Province, gradually becoming the main supporting region for the economic development and population agglomeration of Guangdong.

Based on the theory of landscape ecological security pattern and the RS and GIS techniques, this paper analyzed the distribution of ecological security grades in Nanchong City, taking six elements including terrain condition, flood hazard, soil erosion, vegetation cover, geological disaster, and biological protection as the ecological constraints (or determinants) of urban expansion. According to the minimum cumulative resistance model, the ecological corridors and ecological nodes were built to strengthen the space contact of ecological network, and, on the basis of the protection of ecological safety, the reasonable trend of urban expansion and the optimization of space layout were investigated. The results showed that the ecological security of Nanchong City was quite good, with the regions of low ecological security mainly distributed in the west suburban mountains and the downstream region of Jialing River in the south of the City. Ecological elements were the most important constraints for the future expansion of urban space. There were more spaces for the urban expansion in the southern and northern parts of Nanchong City. To develop satellite towns would be the best selection to guarantee the ecological security of the city.

The demand for accurate and up-to-date spatial information of urban buildings is becoming more and more important for urban planning, environmental protection, and other vocations. Today's commercial high-resolution satellite imagery offers the potential to extract the three-dimensional information of urban buildings. This paper extracted the three-dimensional information of urban buildings from QuickBird imagery, and validated the precision of the extraction based on Barista software. It was shown that the extraction of three-dimensional information of the buildings from high-resolution satellite imagery based on Barista software had the advantages of low professional level demand, powerful universality, simple operation, and high precision. One pixel level of point positioning and height determination accuracy could be achieved if the digital elevation model (DEM) and sensor orientation model had higher precision and the off-Nadir View Angle was relatively perfect.

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process of the third runway building project of Pudong International Airport is briefly introduced in the paper. The basic principle, the features, and the operation steps of newly imported FAA's Integrated Noise Model (INM) are discussed for evaluating the aircraft noise impacts. The prediction of the aircraft noise and the countermeasures for the noise mitigation are developed, which includes the reasonable runway location, the optimized land use, the selection of low noise aircrafts, the Fly Quit Program, the relocation of sensitive receptors and the noise insulation of sensitive buildings. Finally, the expansion project is justified and its feasibility is confirmed.

In this paper, the relationships between landscape pattern and water quality at western reservoir area in Shenzhen City were studied with grey connection method, and the influences of source' and 'sink' landscape patterns on non-point pollution were probed. The results showed that the dominance, adjacency, and fragmentation of 'source' and 'sink' landscapes could markedly influence the water quality. From 2000 to 2001, due to the changes of the 'source' and 'sink' landscape patterns in research areas, the output of pollutants increased and the reduction of pollution decreased, resulting in the deterioration of water quality of three reservoirs. According to the spatial distribution of 'source' and 'sink' landscapes, it was found that the distribution of 'sink' landscapes at the middle-lower reaches of the watersheds had close relationships with the changes of reservoir water quality, suggesting that 'sink' landscape pattern was of significance in the management of non-point pollution.

By using time series Landsat TM satellite images and adopting GIS spatial analysis and landscape pattern analysis methods, this paper studied the spatiotemporal diversity of urban growth and the evolution of urban landscape pattern in Shenyang, and examined their driving forces. The results showed that in 1988-2004, the urban area in Shenyang increased persistently, and the growth intensity enhanced consistently, with the peaks occured in 2000-2004. The spatial differentiation of urban growth in the City was also distinct, with the southwest direction as the leading orientation, and the urban edges and different level economic development zones as the main growth areas. The urban landscape pattern became more and more complex, and the compactness index of urban development decreased. The evolution of urban landscape pattern was related to the characteristics of urban growth, which also showed spatiotemporal diversity. The urban growth and urban landscape pattern evolution in Shenyang were mainly attributed to the development of industrialization and the construction of different level economic development zones, the proper policies of local governments and the urban planning, as well as the development of traffic infrastructure.

Nature, diversity, and openness are what we demand from urban green space in the 21st century. Based on the summary of urban green space connotation, types and significance, this paper reviewed the research hotspots of urban green space, i.e., conservation and planning of urban-rural fringe, restoration and preservation of natural areas and indigenous vegetation, ecological restoration and planning of green way, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem structure and services, and management policy. The difference between foreign and domestic urban green space researches and practices were summarized, and some preferential urban green space research aspects in the future were proposed. It was suggested that in China, urban green space strategy should be integrated into urban planning and land use planning.

By using the satellite images of 4 periods of time, including the data from Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Multi Spectral Scanner (MSS) and SPOT this paper analyzed the landscape change in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone of Guangdong Province, South China in 1979-2003, aimed to study the temporal-spatial landscape change characteristics, their causes, and major driving forces in this zone. The results revealed that the characteristic of landscape change were completely different among test three periods (1979-1990, 1990-2000 and 2000-2003). During the first period (1979-1990), urbanization developed very rapidly, and the natural vegetations mainly in Futian, Luohu and Yantian districts degraded and transformed into a landscape with anthropogenic components. In the second period (1990-2000), landscape conversion mainly took place in Nanshan and Futian districts, where various types of landscape were transformed into impervious surfaces, and parts of the vegetations were transformed into anthropogenic landscapes. During this period, typical urban characteristics were formed, whereas the remaining vegetations, especially forest stand, were little disturbed. In the third period (2000-2003), subtle consolidation was observed, and the use of pervious material in certain areas counteracted the adverse ecological impacts of urbanization. The extent of urbanization still increased, but the intensity of landscape change was at lower level than that in previous periods.

Guangzhou City is a rapidly urbanizing city in China, and a constructed city with holistic planning. By using the remote sensing images of 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2004, this paper studied the 20 years spatio-temporal changes of landscape pattern in Guangzhou, and analyzed the relationships between these changes and urbanization. The landscape and class-level pattern indices of whole Guangzhou City and its five districts were compared, and the results indicated that the landscape pattern in Guangzhou had an obvious spatio-temporal variation, and an increase of diversity and fractal dimension. The landscape structural complexity and fragmentation increased gradually from 1985 to 2004, and the variation intensity and tendency varied during four comparative stages 1985-1990, 1990-1995, 1995-2000, and 2000-2004. It was a rapid development period from 1985 to 1995 in Guangzhou. The represents of ten districts varied in their spatio-temporal landscape pattern, because of the different development progress and planning motive. The urbanization of Panyu was from 1990 to 2000, and its natural landscape was seriously disturbed by human activities. The represents of Conghua and Zengcheng districts were of integrative disturbance, and also, the urbanization process mainly took place during 1990-2000. In the city center consisting of 8 official constructed districts, the urbanization process happened earlier. In Huadu district, the landscape change revealed the frequent and severe human disturbance.

This paper discussed the ecological significance of urban green corridors network in urban green space ecosystem, analyzed the present status of green space ecosystem in the west urban area of Dongying in Shangdong Province, and figured out the ways of constructing urban green corridors network in this area to strengthen the linkage between its fragmented greenbelts, and between these greenbelts and rural natural environment. Through the construction of this network, the greenbelt area in the west urban area of Dongying would increase 1400 hm2, greenbelt area per capita would increase to 66 m2, and urban and rural greenbelts would be integrated into a whole system to serve the whole city, giving a powerful support to enhance the life quality of local people and the stability of urban ecosystem.

A delineation method based on the idea of regarding urban-suburban-supporting area as a system was presented in this paper, with an ecological-social-economic database created. A total of five ecological suitability regions, four ecological sensitivity regions, four ecological service regions, and five economic development regions were plotted out, and the Changsha City ecosystem was divided into five ecological functional regions, according to the heterogeneity among ecological functional units and the similarity of interior units. The areas of the five functional regions accounted for 29.47%, 32.5%, 25.95%, 9.63% and 2.45% of the total area, respectively. This research method had some advantages over traditional methods. It was flexible and efficient, because it could accept any combination of parameters organized on a polygonal base map. The variables could be added, deleted, or updated to produce new thematic map products in a short period of time. Mapping procedures were quantitative and automated. With the incorporation of remote sensing data and global position system rapid positioning, the ecological and environmental changes could be detected by monitoring the changes of regional boundary patterns. Therefore, the ecological functional regionalization of Changsha City provided a fine way of integrating remote sensing data, global position system, and geographic information system.

Urbanization is one of the most important anthropogenic impacts on natural landscape, while urban landscape pattern can reflect the urbanization process and its ecological consequences. In this paper, landscape metrics combined with gradient analysis was employed to analyze the landscape pattern changes of Pudong New District in Shanghai, based on the land use datasets derived from 1:50,000 aerial photos of 1994 and 2000, respectively. The results demonstrated that the landscape pattern of Pudong changed dramatically in its ever-increasing urbanization. The land cover, which was dominated by agriculture in 1994, gradually transformed to urban land use, such as residential area, public facilities, and industry. The percentage of agriculture land use decreased from 71.45% to 41.32%, while the urban land use hold 18.2% in 1994 but rose to 41.9% in 2000. Synoptic landscape characteristics showed the increased patch numbers (from 4.08 to 28.65 ind. x km(-2)), diminished area-weighted mean (from 24.43 to 1.75 km2), decreased aggregation index (from 98.31 to 95.09), and augmented landscape diversity and evenness, all of which demonstrated the higher landscape fragmentation and landscape heterogeneity induced by urbanization. The landscape pattern along the urban-rural gradient reflected the different urbanization stages, and the expanding urban frontier in different years in Pudong New District could be identified precisely with class-level landscape indices. The changes in landscape pattern along the transect suggested that the quantitative analysis of landscape dynamics, especially the landscape metrics combined with gradient analysis, could be a robust tool to study urban morphology, urban structure, and ecological consequences during urbanization.