Human activities drive the land use changes in spatio-temporal dimensions which cause changes of land functions in succession. Land use sectors in China are highly dynamic and of particular importance for the world's sustainable development. Based on a review of the zoning works completed in China, this paper set up an approach for identifying the multifunctionalities of a specific spatial area and further for zoning of projected area in line on the multifunctionalities of a specific spatial area. The objective of spatial function zoning is determined to harmoniously and fully use and protect the multifunctionalities of a specific spatial area including social functions, economic functions and ecological and environmental functions in a region. The approach consists of three steps: (1) assessing and identifying the multifunctionalities linked to a key field of sustainable regional development; (2) identifying the spatial development guidance that determines which actions may best or most appropriately lead to reasonable utilization of spatial multifunctionalities; and (3) establishing schemes and tools including the available instruments and planed instruments in the area to implement measures which contribute to the sustainable utilization of regionally spatial multifunctionalities. This paper indicates that the spatial function method is used to identify, choose and access quantitatively the main spatial functions. At the same time, the information flows and their final results are expressed as a series of maps of spatial function zoning by using method defined as a decision-making tree.
Five controlling experiments with a 3D diagnostic model including a wave-current coupled model, the third generation wave model SWAN (Simulating WAves Nearshore) and the bottom boundary layer model driven by the monthly discharge and sediment load of the Yellow River, was conducted to individually explore the effects of tidal currents, wind waves, residual circulation and the Bohai Sea circulation. The simulations on the temporal-spatial variation of SPM (Suspended Particular Matter) concentration and sediment flux from the Yellow River to the Bohai Sea were carried out. It could be discerned that the surface sediment concentration in the waters is quite low except for the Yellow River estuary. The sediment from the Yellow River cannot be delivered in long distance under the condition of tidal currents. Almost all the sediment from the Yellow River is deposited out of the river delta under the condition of the wind-driven residual circulation, and part of the inflow sediment is delivered to and deposited in the Bohai Gulf and the Laizhou Bay. The temporal variation of the suspended load concentration in vertical direction indicates that, the bottom shear stress induced by the wind-driven currents cannot reach the critical shear stress for erosion, and then no re-suspension is incurred. On the basis of wind forcing, the sediment from the Yellow River is mainly transported north-northwestward, and some sediment which is first delivered to the Laizhou Bay is continuously moved northward. On the basis of wind-driven and tide-induced residual circulation, the suspended load transport depicts an obvious 3D structure characteristic, and the depth-integrated sediment flux is quite different from the residual circulation in the Bohai Sea. The residual circulation cannot satisfy the transport structure of the suspended particle matters in the Bohai Sea, especially for the suspended load with complicated vertical processes. The phase of the temporal variation of the sediment concentration and transport pattern due to the interaction between waves and currents is consistent with that of the bottom shear stress, which is modulated by the wind variation, all of which is proved to have a ten-day cycle. Around the Yellow River estuary, currents fields contribute a lot to the outward transportation of the sediment. In other waters, the surface waves-induced bottom shear stress due to the wind forcing makes enormous sediment re-suspended locally, which continues to be transported by horizontal currents.
Slope surface is the most important sediment source area in basins on the Loess Plateau, and it is of great significance to the study on runoff generation capacity influenced by rainfall and slope surface characteristics. Seven runoff plots, located on the shady side of Tuanshangou Gully in hilly loess region on the Loess Plateau, were selected in this paper, using nine years of dataset, and the changing rule of runoff coefficients on different slope surfaces were studied in the context of different rainfall regimes. According to rainfall depth, rainfall duration, and rainfall intensity, the nine years of rainfalls in the study area were classified into three regimes through K-means clustering in SPSS software, i.e. rainfall regime A with high rainfall intensity, short duration and high occurring frequency, rainfall regime C with low rainfall intensity, long duration and low occurring frequency, and B the medium. Studies found that, for each of the study plots, runoff coefficients induced by rainfall regime A were the highest, and those induced by rainfall regime C the lowest. However, scale effect on runoff induced by rainfall regime A was the least, and that induced by rainfall regime C the largest. In slope Mao region, given the same slope degree, runoff coefficients firstly increased, and then decreased, and a peak value occurred for rainfall regime A on the slope surfaces of Nos.2-4 plots, however, runoff coefficients increased with increasing slope lengths for rainfall regimes B and C. For the slope surfaces of Nos.1, 4, and 5 plots that have the same slope length, under all the three rainfall regimes, runoff coefficients increased with increasing slope gradients. Entering gully slope area, runoff plot No.6 had the lowest coefficient in the condition of rainfall regime A and those induced with rainfall regimes B and C had higher values. For entire slope surface of No.7 plot, runoff coefficients induced by the three rainfall regimes had the medium values.
Through collecting 966 samples of measured data of farmland topsoil organic carbon, as well as temperature and precipitation data from 1980 to 2006 of China, this paper analyzed changing characteristics of farmland soil organic carbon of China, discussed the reasons of change and development trends, and analyzed the differences of carbon sequestration ability of the temperature and rainfall on the paddy soil and dry soil, and the affection of temperature and rainfall on the soil organic carbon in different regions. The results show that farmland topsoil organic carbon of measured points presents upward trend overall, with 79% of increase samples mainly concentrated in the rise of 0~3% range. Soil organic carbon content was subject to climatic factors of temperature and precipitation, and the combination of hydrothermal conditions. Over the past 20 years, the distribution patterns of farmland topsoil organic carbon content remains unchanged. The change of farmland soil organic carbon was mainly affected by the impact of human activities. The difference of land use on soil carbon sequestration was significant, the level paddy soil organic carbon was significantly higher than the dry land, and the content of paddy topsoil organic carbon was 175%~176% of that of dry land.
Changes of the climatic zones are related to climate warming and its impacts. The northern boundary of sub-tropical zone is between the temperate and sub-tropical zones, which is a very important boundary in China's climatic divisions. In this paper a case study is made on the impact of climate warming on the northern boundary of sub-tropical zones of China. The data covering about 55 years (1951~2005) of daily mean temperature with 740 stations are obtained from China Meteorological Administration. According to the definition of the first class climatic zone from Climatological Atlas of the People's Republic of China, the authors use the number of days with secular pentad mean temperature passing through ≥10℃ as the main index, and January mean air temperature as the auxiliary indices. Namely the definition of the northern boundary of sub-tropical zone is the divide where the number of days with secular pentad mean temperature passing through ≥10℃ reaches 218, the accumulated temperature with ≥10℃ is 4500~4800℃, and January mean air temperature is 0℃. The authors count respectively the inter-decadal changes of indices of the first class climatic zone in north sub-tropical and temperate zones in 1951~2005, and the changes of the north sub-tropical belt in the periods 1951~1970, 1971~1990 and 1991~2005. The results show that: the number of days of secular pentad mean temperature passing through ≥10℃, the accumulated temperature ≥10℃ and January mean air temperature all have an upward trend in the 55 years in the vicinity of 34 degrees north latitude. Since the 1950s, there has been little change in the western section of the northern boundary of sub-tropical zone; the central and eastern sections of the northern boundary of sub-tropical zone moved to the north over a large range. By the beginning of the 21st century the central and eastern sections has moved to near 35°N, i.e., 2~3 degrees of latitude northward, compared with the period 1951~1970. The northern boundary of sub-tropical zone moving towards the north, which is a response to climate warming, will have a very important influence on the agricultural pattern and the ecological environment.
Based on the data for 193 meteorological observation stations in eastern China from 1955 to 2005, the authors analyzed the spatial and temporal characteristics of summer high-temperature events (daily maximum temperature above 35℃). Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis reveals that there are three main patterns for the high-temperature events. The first EOF pattern is Characterized by a uniform anomaly over the whole east China with a center along the Yangtze River valley.The second is a dipole pattern with two centers in southernmost China and the areas to north, and the third mode shows an out of phase pattern between east and west parts of the area. These patterns are tightly related to the atmospheric circulation. The results show that ENSO, Equatorial Indian Ocean and Western Pacific Warm Pool SST could affect the frequency of summer high temperature by influencing the Western Pacific and East Asia atmospheric circulation. ENSO and Western Pacific Warm Pool have a great impact on the first EOF. And the relationship between the second EOF and Equatorial Indian Ocean SST is a significantly negative correlation. The relations between high temperature and the preceding SST of "key regions" are studied; there are evident positive correlations between the preceding summer SST of Western Pacific Warm Pool and the first EOF, which is negatively correlated with the preceding winter SST of Equatorial East Pacific. And the second EOF is most impacted by the preceding winter SST of Equatorial Indian Ocean.
Based on the historical materials in the Yuan Dynasty in Jinghe and Luohe drainage basins, this paper analyzed the sequence, temporal change and the cause of drought disasters. The results indicated that the Jinghe and Luohe drainage basins suffered from 29 drought disaster events in total, averaged one occurrence every 3.2 years during the 94 years from the early to late Yuan Dynasty (1266AD-1359AD). The drought disasters in the Yuan Dynasty in the Jinghe and Luohe drainage basins were mainly slight ones, which accounted for 44.8% of the total, followed by moderate drought disasters accounting for 37.9% of the total. The occurrence of the severest ones was also higher, being 13.8%, and that of heavy drought disasters were the lowest, or 3.5%. There were diverse changes in the occurrences of drought disasters during the early, middle and late Yuan Dynasty in the Jinghe and Luohe drainage basins. Summer droughts were the main type, followed by spring drought. The successive occurrences of spring and summer droughts as well as four seasons were also higher, only next to spring droughts. The intra-annual variations in the temperature and precipitation were the main cause of the slight and moderate drought disasters. The climatic trend toward drought resulted in the heavy and severest ones during the middle Yuan Dynasty in the two basins. Thus we infer that there was one drought event in the Yuan Dynasty in the Jinghe and Luohe drainage basins, occurring between 1326~1332. Initially, we determined that yearly average precipitation of heavy drought disasters was about 400mm and yearly average precipitation of the severest drought disaster was about 350mm in the main drought disaster areas.
Based on complex physiognomy of the mountainous city, as well as its underlying surface type, this paper used TM, DEM and ETM+ data to extract the land-use cover types of Chongqing, and retrieved the land surface temperature by using single Landsat TM/ETM6 thermal infrared data to analyze complex urban landscape of 1988 and 2000. The integration of remote sensing and GIS was further applied to examine the influence of land cover change and urban growth on land surface temperatures. The article analyzes land-cover change in Chongqing during recent 10 years and its influence on land surface temperature. The results show that the combination of various land cover types extracted by effective infrared band and retrieved land surface temperature space as well as plant-covered space, could accurately reveal the relationship of plant-covered degree and retrieved land surface temperature. And then this paper demonstrates that the rise of land surface temperature in Chongqing is mainly due to urban land development. In the period 1988-2000, the land-cover of the study area changed significantly, in particular, the urban construction land area increased significantly. The land-cover change led to spatial changes of the LST distribution. Furthermore, urban development in Chongqing raised land surface radiant temperature. We studied four types of cultivated land surface temperatures related to mountains, hills, fattened land (intermontane basins) and steep slopes. The results show that the land-cover changes in the mountainous city caused the changes of NDVI, and the change of NDVI caused the land surface temperature. As NDVI decreased by 10%, the land surface temperature rose by 0.49K. Finally the essay concludes that the increase of accuracy defined by land surface emissivity could increase the accuracy of retrieved land surface temperature. The increase of categorical accuracy in land use types could demonstrate how land use change influences land surface temperature in the mountainous city, which should be emphasized in further researches.
Based on multi-temporal Landsat TM/ETM+ Images and GIS, we extracted information of urban construction land use in Hangzhou with supervised classification and overlay technology. The characteristics of the changes of urban construction land use were analyzed with the aid of spatial overlay technique in order to obtain urban spatial expansion information. Then, the intensity index, direction of urban expansion as well as the situation of the land occupied by urban expansion are analyzed quantitatively, and the socioeconomic driving forces factor and their effect mechanism during the last 15 years (1991 to 2008) were explained. The result revealed that the rate of urban expansion in Hangzhou city was very quick and the urban land area in 2008 was over twice more than that in 1991. The arable land around the urban area, water body and woodland, the main land use types due to the urban expansion, accounted for 66.98%, 17.71% and 15.31% respectively. The study also showed that the main human driving forces causing urban expansion in Hangzhou in the past 15 years included the following aspects: the high-speed economic development, the rapid growth of population, the increase of investment at home and abroad, the quick renewal in the old city and the development of suburban real estate, the group development of Higher Education and Science and Technology Development Zone, and the development of urban transport facilities such as the four bridges across the Qiantang River and the two ringed highways around the Hangzhou city. The local government ought to rethink profoundly the advantages and disadvantages of urban expansion in the different stages, and to do in-depth analyses of the future urban expansion mechanism to push forward sustainable urban expansion.
In order to resolve the problems of semantics integration of multi-source spatial data, based on the latest study results in spatial data and geo-ontology integrating fields, a method of spatial data integrating based on geo-ontologies was presented and a prototype system based on the method was implemented in this paper. The method was based on the hybrid ontology integration architecture and the strategy of local geo-ontologies integrating into standard geo-ontology was used, and all geo-ontologies involved in this method were described by a component called "Common Intension Property Panel" (CIPP) which included the intension properties of all geographic concepts in the concerned fields, and the CIPP was often given by the community specialists. Based on the CIPP, semantic relationships between geographic concepts in different geo-ontologies can be calculated and established, which can complete the integration of different geo-ontologies. Above all, the purpose and the key step of this method was to integrate spatial data which were from different information communities and had different goe-ontologies, and spatial data integration was completed based on semantic relationships between geographic concepts in different geo-ontologies and relationships between geographic concepts and feature classes, and included steps of SQL statements generating, feature sets selecting, geometry shape of selected features copying, and semantic granularity fining, spatial objects merging and splitting, and so on. Through these steps, spatial data having different geo-ontologies and their semantics were integrated successfully into the standard geodatabase, in which all feature classes have the same geo-ontology and semantics. Based on this method, a prototype system of spatial data integration based on geo-ontologies was designed and developed, which can provide users some convenient tools to build formal geo-ontologies automatically and integrate geo-ontologies and spatial datasets semi-automatically after integrating rules selected by users. The result of an example study of land use datasets integration using the prototype system showed that the spatial data integrating method based on geo-ontologies presented in this paper could integrate spatial datasets and their semantics efficiently.
There are many problems in conceptual modeling process, such as difficulty of modeling conception sharing, complexity of modeling method, difficulty in cooperative modeling by experts from different domains, and so on. In order to solve those problems, we study the metadata and semantic of geographic conceptual scenarios, geographic conceptual entities and relationships among them. In this paper, geographic conceptual entities are represented by the configurable icons, the relationships among entities are represented while geographic conceptual scenario is organized, and finally the geographic conceptual scenario is built. As the manifestation of geographic conceptual entities and relationships among them, those icons contain the meaning of geo-model, geo-semantics, geo-data, and the match rules between models and data. According to the geo-problem domain, geo-study area, and temporal and spatial scale, geographic icons are chosen to represent geographic conceptual entities and relationships, and match rules are used to build geographic conceptual scenarios. During this process, spatial data specification and geographic model metadata specification are designed as its induction and matching rules, and conception/relationship constrain engine, graphics/conception constrain engine and model/data match engine are designed to guide the model match and data match process. In this paper, the geographic conceptual model of hydrological cycle at regional scale is applied to validate the geographic conceptual modeling environment. By the experiments, it is shown that our research is a new attempt for geographic conceptual modeling, and that this environment is flexible for geographic conceptual scenario building, modeling conception sharing, and modeling result reusing. As a result, it provides a convenient and visualized modeling method for experts in multi-domain of geographic fields.
Based on the theoretical research results about the relationships of the Port-hinterland at home and abroad, this paper analyzes the mean value correlation degree of Lianyungang Port-Huaihai Economic Region by grey correlation analysis method during the period 1990~2005 as well as the driving factors affecting the correlation degree of Lianyungang Port-Huaihai Economic Region. Some conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) The correlation degree of Lianyungang Port-Lianyungang City is remarkable as a whole, but the stage characteristics are obvious. (2) The correlation discrepency degree has regional characteristics between Lianyungang Port and northern Jiangsu, southern Shandong, northern Anhui and eastern Henan of Huaihai Economic Region, that is to say, northern Anhui and eastern Henan maintains stable, southern Shandong presents a descending trend, northern Jiangsu rises slowly. (3) The process of economic integration of Lianyungang Port-Huaihai Economic Region has been accelerated on the basis that the correlation development trend is strong on the whole, but the weakening tendency is obvious. (4) These driving factors affecting the interactive level of Lianyungang Port-Huaihai Economic Region are natural conditions and locations, infrastructure and transportation, economic level and policies, and the integration degree of hinterland.
New economic growth theories stress the role of dynamic externalities in driving economic growth. Three types of dynamic externalities, including MAR externalities, Porter externalities and Jacob externalities, are tested in a variety of empirical studies although results are rather inconclusive. This study proposes that impacts of dynamic externalities on local growth are conditional on economic transition in China. Using data on two digit manufacturing industries at the prefecture level during the period of 2000~2005, this study found a significant nonlinear relationship between dynamic externalities and local industrial growth. Industrial specialization and local competition may help city industry growth but hurt local growth when they exceed a certain level. Diversity helps industry growth but only when it reaches a certain level. This study also found that liberalized, globalized and protected industries are more likely to benefit from dynamic externalities. Industries located in cities with greater authorities and responsibilities are found to grow faster. The results clearly suggest that economic transition has created conditions to allow more significant roles of dynamic externalities in stimulating city industry growth in China.
This paper uses the social network analysis (SNA) to examine the evolution of networks in traditional manufacturing clusters of undeveloped rural areas, based on the case of steel measuring tape cluster in Nanzhuang village, Yucheng county, Henan province. By contrasting the network structure and characteristics of the spin-off networks in initial stage with that of the emotion networks, advice networks and cooperation networks in present stage in the cluster, it finds the particularities of evolution of networks in traditional manufacturing clusters of undeveloped rural areas, such as the auto-organizational principle of this kind of clusters. In the process of this evolution, the changing of the size, status, capabilities of the enterprises or the community environmental changes may alter the core relations in cluster network. The evolution of networks in traditional manufacturing clusters of undeveloped rural areas can be divided into four stages, that is, the family-extensive family networks, the division-production networks, the local innovation networks and the global supply networks. The different types play different roles in different stages of cluster development. Meanwhile, the intrinsic capabilities and the extrinsic contracts of enterprises also match the network stages respectively.
As a new research frontier in the domain of sustainability science and global environment change since the 1990s, 'Vulnerability' provides a valuable research paradigm on the regional sustainable development. Mining cities, which have been and will be an important power to regional and national development of China, are confronted with complex problems on the regional sustainable development. Among these problems, urban employment of mining cities during the process of adjustment of regional and national economic structure since the 1990s has been an important factor which induces social instability. Based on the research paradigm of 'vulnerability analysis', the paper intends to study the urban employment of mining cities in a new way. Taking 14 typical mining cities of Northeast China as examples, first, the paper analyzed the elements and characteristics of employment vulnerability of mining cities in Northeast China, and then based on the data from statistical yearbooks of these regions and other correlated statistics, the influencing factors and disparities of employment vulnerability of mining cities in Northeast China were analyzed by integrating BP neural network with vulnerability index. The paper concludes that urban employment of mining cities in Northeast China is of typical vulnerable characteristics for their high sensitivity and lack of resources and effective ways to cope with the unemployment problem. To indicate the disparities of employment vulnerability of different mining cities, 16 indicators are selected to signify the sensitivity and response capacity of the mining city, and BP neural network and vulnerability index are integrated to rank the employment vulnerability degree of these mining cities. The results show that the correlated relationship between sensitivity and response capacity of these mining cities is not prominent, urban employment of most mining cities is of high sensitivity, the difference among the response capacity of different mining cities to unemployment is obviously larger, which plays a leading role in determining the employment vulnerability degree of different mining cities. In addition, mining cities based on different resources or in different stages of life circle differ greatly in their employment vulnerability, the employment vulnerability of mining cities based on oil resources is relatively low in Northeast China, most mining cities based on coal resources are of higher employment vulnerability compared with other kinds of mining cities, and the employment vulnerability of mining cities in recession stage is much higher than that of mining cities in mature and growing stage.
The urban fringe does exist impersonally, but it is difficult to identify it precisely. Current methods have some difficulty in combining spatial precision with linkage of spatial units and attribute data. There are two problems in current methods such as the single-factor-method and the multiple-factor-method for identifying the rural-urban fringe spatially. One is the spatial precision, and the other is the poor linkage of spatial units and attributes data. As viewed from industrial activities, this article believes that rural-urban fringe is a result of dual effects of urbanization and sub-urbanization. Based on industrial structure character and industrial distribution, this article has proposed a new single-factor-method for indentifying the urban fringe spatially by dint of some analysis instruments such as non-linear regression, spatial auto correlation and GIS. In addition, this article has made a case study of Beijing City by using the data of 1996 and 2001 National Basic Unit Surveys. The method proposed in this article can be further divided into four steps. First, the method estimates spatial distribution functions of manufacturing and service industry in the study area. Secondly, it draws the datum line of the urban fringe as the keynote and reference line of the fringe area based on industrial structure character. Thirdly, it draws the inside and outside boundaries of the urban fringe by defining the directional spatial auto correlation coefficient to identify the mutational site of industrial distribution. Finally, the method confirms the area of the urban fringe by combining the absolute value of employed population density of manufacture and service industry. The case study of Beijing City shows that the urban fringe of Beijing City is a discontinuity belt of different widths surrounding the Beijing central city. Its average width was 11 km in 1996 and widened to 13 km in 2001. Its area is about 2.5 times larger than that of the central city. The urban fringe of Beijing City moved 2.5 km away from the central area since 1996 to 2001 and every direction reached more and more equilibrium with each other. But the process of ringed expansion would tend to the limit. The sectorial expansion towards south and east will be the main trend of the spatial development of Beijing central city in the future.
Based on the consumer questionnaires of the 3 traditional retailing centers, Qianmen, Wangfujing and Xidan in Beijing, this paper analyzes the present features of consumer composition in the 3 retailing centers. The results are shown as follows. Firstly the differences in consumer composition maintain historical continuity of characteristics of retailing centers. Secondly, function diversity of traditional commercial centers is becoming considerable. Thirdly, spatial distribution of local consumer is becoming decentralization and equalization. What's more, evolution course and function transition of traditional retailing centers is revealed based on the changes in consumer composition in different periods. The result shows that the commercial functions of the 3 traditional retailing centers are mutually complement in their formation stage, and they are similar in planned economy, transitional in market economy during the 1990s, and diverse in the early 21st century. Finally, the renewal method and development trends of traditional retailing centers are discussed based on evaluation results in consumer perspective. The conclusion is that expansion of tourism and entertainment function is the future renewal method of traditional retailing centers. The evaluation result also shows that the future development trend of traditional retailing centers in consumer perspective is consistent with the historical features of the traditional retailing centers, and the differences of feature developing trends among the 3 retailing centers show different transition ways of the 3 areas.
Pursuing an ideal urban living environment of mankind is the common goal of human beings. On the one hand, the urban aggregation effect not only leads to an expansion of the city scale, but also causes a concentration of various production and life pollutants, and urban environment quality deterioration. What city size is suitable for the improvement of environment quality, is a question needed to be discussed deeply. Through constructing a theoretical model of urban scale-environment quality, this paper analyzes the panel data of China during 1997~2006 based on the variable-intercept model. The results are shown as follows: the empirical model of city scale-environment quality in China presents a positive N-shaped curve, the corresponding city scales of the two turning points of the curve are 2.6 and 9.3 million. According to the empirical model, the optimal city scale is 2.6 million, and the reasonable city scale is between 2~3.5 million. Apart from some provincial capital cities and all of the cities at prefecture level and above, the majority of the cities in China are in a rising stage of environment quality, and the expanding of city scale is favorable to the sustainable utilization of urban environment. In order to alleviate the constraint of urban environment to sustainable development, environment-friendly development in the process of urbanization is called for by the severe situation in current China. From the empirical model, the result indicates that the city scale-environment quality in China did not show an inverted N-shaped curve concluded by the theoretical model. On the one hand, it is revealed that the specificity of China's urbanization, on the other hand, there is still certain limitation in the theoretical model. So the improvement of the theoretical model needs further support by more empirical research.
Urban spatial growth pattern has become a hot topic of geographic science and urban research. After the land reform initiated in 1987, cities in China are facing a new development wave. With the rapid growth of urban space, urban sprawl emerges. Modeling an urban growth pattern is the prerequisite to understanding the urbanization process of China. This paper presents a spatial analysis method of using remote sensing and GIS, and models major patterns of urban spatial growth in the period of 1979~2007 by a case study of Nanjing City. Firstly, the remote images are registered to the GIS data. Secondly, five land cover classes are identified from the images. Then, the different urban spatial growth patterns are established by mobile window calculation technology. It is found that the main spatial growth pattern of inner city is filling and the main spatial growth pattern of outer city expands during 1979~1988; the main spatial growth of inner city is slow and the main spatial growth pattern of outer city expands with linear and clustered features during 1988~2000; expansion and cluster patterns have been relatively obvious since 2000. This paper discusses the features of urban spatial growth of Nanjing. During 1979~1988, urban spatial growth of each district is slow, and the inner growth is in excess of suburban growth, with the peak value of urban growth appearing 5km away from the city center. During the period of 1988~2000, urban growth of suburban areas is in excess of inner city, with the peak value of urban growth appearing 6~13km away from the city center. The most insensitive growth appears in the southeast part of the city, and the growth of each aspect is relatively insensitive except the east and west. During the period of 2000~2007, urban growth of suburban areas is at high speed, and the peak value of urban growth appears 5~17km away from the city center. The most insensitive growth appears in the southeast, and the urban growth of each direction is insensitive except the west, and the development trend of urban areas is towards the north and south. The influencing factors of urban spatial growth are very complex, the main ones of which are social and economic development. Besides, the guideline of urban planning and impact of urban spatial structure are quite obvious. Other driving forces are also important, such as the rebuilding of inner city, new towns development, construction of infrastructure and development zones, population incensement and economic development. The results show that 80% of urban spatial growth emerges in the urban planning districts during 1979~2007, and that each period and direction of urban growth are affected by new towns development, as wellas construction of infrastructure and development zones.
The previous attention to the urban evolution is mostly about the variety of the architecture landscape, the increase and changes of roads, the construction of good-sized infrastructure, the development of the urban green area ecosystem and urban real estate, the adjustment of urban spatial structure as well as the building of city culture and city culture industry, emphasizing the change of urban macroscopical factors, and attaching importance to the transformation of urban physical form and structure. Especially in the process of studies on famous historic and cultural cities and historic sites, the scholars have paid more attention to the protection and development of constructions and historic areas. In other words, the accomplished studies further emphasized the practicalities which bear the weight of historic meaning and city culture, but ignore the important effects of the urban toponym which record the unique history of the urban area, labeling the urban change, confirming the urban development, embodying the mutative stream of the city. It is pointed out that by analyzing the toponym that is a visual and accessible cultural factor, the track of urban development and changes could be discerned, and at the same time, based on the frequent urbanization, many inner rules of urban development and renovation were open out. And these were the valuable reference of urban development and the effective protection of historic areas. This paper studied the changes of toponym, Liwan of Guangzhou, and brought forward the symbolic effect and evaluation of the toponym in the process of studying decline and renewal of the city.
