Abstract
China’s transportation industry has made great achievements in the past 40 years of reform and opening up. At the same time, it has gradually accumulated a series of problems. These problems have led to closer and more complex social and economic connection within and between regions of different scales. The existing research only carries out the characteristic analysis of urban network spatial connection and pattern from a single perspective such as “flow space” theory, spatial interaction model and accessibility method, and fails to accurately describe the complex socio-economic relations between regions. Based on the big data of railway passenger flow, this study selected weighted average travel time, railway network density, and the economic connection model to express the urban network spatial connection and structure of China in 2016 from the perspectives of time, space, and interaction. In 2016, the accessibility, connectivity, and total urban external economic connection of the railway network showed a trend of declining from the east to the west. The top 50 cities ranked by interurban economic connection were all located in the central and eastern regions and showed “diamond shape” distribution characteristics. The four diamond-shaped pairs were Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Chengyu urban agglomerations. This shape was basically in line with the T-shaped space that has existed for a long time in China’s regional development. The accessibility, connectivity, and total external economic connection of national-level urban agglomerations were greater than those of regional-level urban agglomerations, and far greater than those of local-level urban agglomerations. The results showed that there was a mismatch between the layout of the railway network and the population. It will still be necessary to focus on strengthening the construction of transportation infrastructure in urban agglomerations and densely populated areas in the future. This study enriches the “flow space” theory, more fully describes urban network spatial connection and structure in China by considering the three perspectives of time, space, and interaction, and can provides reasonable suggestions for the development of national comprehensive three-dimensional transportation network planning, regional spatial structure optimization, and sustainable development.
Highlights
Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has made remarkable achievements in the development of transportation, and a comprehensive transportation system was initially established [1]
(2) Based on preprocessed data, the weighted average travel time that integrated the impact of urban scale and urban development level on accessibility was used to depict the time characteristics of urban network spatial connection and structure, which suggested the time from a certain county to each economic center
The weighted average travel time was less than 7 h, which indicated the highest accessibility in these regions and was mainly distributed in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, Central Plains, Yangtze River Delta, Wuhan metropolitan area, Pearl River Delta and Harbin-Changchun urban agglomeration
Summary
Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has made remarkable achievements in the development of transportation, and a comprehensive transportation system was initially established [1]. In 2020, it formed a national transportation system with expressways and high-speed railways as the framework. The national construction of high-speed transportation facilities has gradually accumulated a series of problems, such as the mismatch between the transportation layout and the population and urban layout [4], the exacerbation of the vertical imbalance by construction of expressways and high-speed railways [5], and the unreasonable competition in the construction of regional transportation system [6], which led to the social and economic connections among regions becoming closer and complex. Based on the “flow space” theory, scholars at home and abroad to carry out related research on the pattern and connection of urban network space using geographical methods such as the spatial interaction model and accessibility model, which can provide theoretical and methodological support for regional economic connection, spatial structure, and sustainable development
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