Social Sensing of the Imbalance of Urban and Regional Development in China Through the Population Migration Network around Spring Festival

Yujing Wang,Michael Jendryke,Jianzhong Guo,Rui Xin,Ruoxin Zhu,Jian Yang,Liqiu Meng,Diao Lin

doi:10.3390/su12083457

Abstract

Regional development differences are a universal problem in the economic development process of countries around the world. In recent decades, China has experienced rapid urban development since the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy. However, development differs across regions, triggering the migration of laborers from underdeveloped areas to developed areas. The interaction between regional development differences and Spring Festival has formed the world’s largest cyclical migration phenomenon, Spring Festival travel. Studying the migration pattern from public spatiotemporal behavior can contribute to understanding the differences in regional development. This paper proposes a geospatial network analytical framework to quantitatively characterize the imbalance of urban/regional development based on Spring Festival travel from the perspectives of complex network science and geospatial science. Firstly, the urban development difference is explored based on the intercity population flow difference ratio, PageRank algorithm, and attractiveness index. Secondly, the community detection method and rich-club coefficient are applied to further observe the spatial interactions between cities. Finally, the regional importance index and attractiveness index are used to reveal the regional development imbalance. The methods and findings can be used for urban planning, poverty alleviation, and population studies.

Highlights

Regional development differences have always been one of the core issues in urban study and a universal problem in the economic development process of countries around the world [1,2,3]
The social sensing approach based on Sina Weibo data is used to observe the intercity migration flow in China around Spring Festival and reveal the imbalanced development and spatial interactions among cities
Regarding the development of a city, the relative flow difference ratio (RFDR) around Spring Festival indicates the differentiated development of Chinese cities

Summary

Introduction

Regional development differences have always been one of the core issues in urban study and a universal problem in the economic development process of countries around the world [1,2,3]. The circular and cumulative causation theory indicates that the economic development process does not occur simultaneously and spread uniformly in space, but starts from some areas with better conditions [5]. Through the back-wash effect and the spread effect of the growth pole, they affect and drive the development of surrounding areas and other industries. The hypothesis of the inverted-U-shaped relationship between spatial inequality and economic development shows that in the initial stage of development, the back-wash effect will be more obvious, and a large amount of capital, technology, talent, and other production factors will gather at the growth poles [8]. There must be a small number of cities that have gradually developed into regional hubs, attracting migrants from the surrounding areas

Methods

Results

Conclusion