Study on the division of main functional regions based on relative carrying capacity of resources: a case study of Guiyang, southwest China

Abstract

The main functional area is a concept proposed by China based on foreign spatial planning, which breaks the long-standing concept of taking economic aggregate as the starting point for regional development, strengthens the application of ecological consciousness in spatial planning, and reflects the respect for natural contexts of topography and landform. The ideology has a milestone significance for China's promotion of the coordinated development of all regions. Due to the nonuniformity of spatial distribution of resources and repeated construction and disordered development of national land space in pursuit of political achievements in some regions, some prominent problems have occurred in China's territorial resources, which seriously restrict the coordinated development of the region. For these reasons, this study examines internal relation between resource carrying capacity and main functional area and divides main functional areas on the basis of regional resource carrying capacity measurement, to construct the main functional zoning model based on relative resource carrying capacity. Taking Guiyang City as the research area and its ten administrative districts as the basic evaluation unit, this study divided Guiyang into three main functional areas: key development zones, optimizing development zone I and optimized development zone II when taking the whole country as the reference area. Some development proposals are put forward according to different functional areas. This study further analyzes relative resource carrying capacity evolution (2013–2017) of each administrative district. Results show that Guiyang is now mainly in the optimizing development zone. Changes in relative resource carrying capacity have been relatively stable since 2013. Applying the model of relative resource carrying capacity to the main function zoning can achieve good results and promote regional coordinated development to some extent.