Beijing Metropolitan Area Research Articles

Urban spillover or rural industrialisation: Which drives the growth of Beijing Metropolitan Area

Two competing forces are traditionally considered to be responsible for the formation and expansion of metropolitan areas. One is urban spillover, which stresses the dispersion of residents from the city centre; the other is rural industrialisation, which focuses on in situ industrialisation in peripheries. The traditional idea that these two forces are geographically incompatible and temporarily unchangeable is challenged by this study. By analysing the development trajectories and growth drivers of Beijing Metropolitan Area (BMA), the study shows that the development of this area between 1995 and 2010 was driven jointly by both forces. For counties that were already part of BMA in 1995, the dominant growth driver in the following years has shifted from rural industrialisation to urban spillover. For counties joining BMA after 1995, much of their incorporation was first driven by rural industrialisation and later by urban spillover. For all the counties in 2010, those closer to the city core were generally dominated by urban spillover but those farther away were largely by rural industrialisation. These findings confirm that urban spillover and rural industrialisation are neither geographically incompatible nor temporarily unchangeable but can co-shape one metropolitan area. They also suggest that the two forces are actually contingent on local conditions that can vary both across space and over time.

Modeling air pollution regulation

Environmental Policy The government of China has set ambitious goals to reduce air pollution in the infamously smoggy metropolitan areas of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei, known collectively as Jing-Jin-Ji. However, pollution initiatives may simply shift the responsible industries, such as coal power plants, to neighboring parts of China. Fang et al. modeled the effects of these regulatory measures. Although the Jing-Jin-Ji region may see reductions in primary air pollution, the current approach may cause higher emissions across northern China and threaten already scarce natural resources like fresh water. Sci. Adv. 10.1126/sciadv.aav4707 (2019).

Urban Commercial Spatial Structure Optimization in the Metropolitan Area of Beijing: A Microscopic Perspective

Urban commercial districts (UCDs) are the concentrated areas for commercial activities in a city, which provide shopping, leisure, business, and other functions. Urban planners usually face problems in how to plan and design UCDs. The layout of UCDs should not only be appropriately concentrated to realize economic benefits, but should also be properly dispersed to accommodate the distribution of the population. Using Beijing as a case study, this study conducted research into UCDs from a microscopic perspective by utilizing open source big data. A recognition and classification method of UCDs was proposed based on the data of POI and road networks. The proposed model combines Huff’s model and the Voronoi method to analyze how various UCDs should be distributed within a city according to the spatial pattern of the population. The results showed that different kinds of UCDs had different spatial distribution features. Problems were also found, for example, UCDs on the urban outskirts served a large population; there were limitations to the spatial distribution of UCDs in the downtown area; and there was incongruity between the UCD types and the population layout. Based on these findings, suggestions regarding the optimization of the urban commercial spatial structure were also put forward.

Chemical characterization and source apportionment of PM2.5 personal exposure of two cohorts living in urban and suburban Beijing

In the study, personal PM2.5 exposures and their source contributions were characterized for 159 subjects living in the Beijing Metropolitan area. The exposures and sources were examined as functions of residential location, season, vocation, cigarette smoking, and time spent outdoors. Sampling was performed for two categories of volunteers, guards and students, that lived in urban and suburban areas of Beijing. Samples were collected using portable PM2.5 monitors during summer and winter. Exposure measurements were supplemented with a questionnaire that tracked personal activity and time spent in microenvironments that may have impacted exposures. Simultaneously, ambient PM2.5 data were obtained from national network stations located at the Gucheng and Huairouzhen sites. These data were used as a comparison against the personal PM2.5 exposures and produced poor correlations between personal and ambient PM2.5. These results demonstrate that individual behavior strongly affects personal PM2.5 exposure. Six primary sources of personal PM2.5 exposure were determined using a positive matrix factorization (PMF) source apportionment model. These sources included Roadway Transport Source, Soil/Dust Source, Industrial/Combustion Source, Secondary Inorganic Source, Cd Source, and Household Heating Source. Averaged across all subjects and seasons, the highest source contribution was Secondary Inorganic Source (24.8% ± 32.6%, AVG ± STD), whereas the largest primary ambient source was determined to be Roadway Transport (20.9% ± 13.6%). Subjects were classified according to the questionnaire and were used to help understand the relationship between personal activity and source contribution to PM2.5 exposure. In general, primary ambient sources showed only significant spatial and seasonal differences, while secondary sources differed significantly between populations with different personal behavior. In particular, Cd source was found to be related to smoking exposure and was the most unpredictable source, with significant differences between populations of different sites, vocations, smoking exposures, and outdoor time.

The Dynamic Impacts of Employment Subcenters on Residential Land Price in Transitional China: An Examination of the Beijing Metropolitan Area

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the urban spatial structure in developing countries. In China, studies have shown that many mega cities or big cities have been transformed into polycentric spatial structures. However, polycentric spatial structures’ impact on urban development requires further empirical research, including in relation to land price, commuting, and population distribution. Taking Beijing as an example, this paper discusses employment subcenters’ rise and evolution on residential land prices. Using the land transaction data for 2001–2013, this paper analyzes the residential market characteristics in terms of their temporal and spatial variation and studies the impact of employment subcenters on residential land prices using a Hedonic model of Beijing city for 2001–2004, 2005–2008, and 2009–2013. This paper finds that (1) Beijing’s employment subcenters increased from one in 2001 to four in 2004 and six in 2008, while the spatial distribution was diffused from the center of the city to the suburbs; (2) Beijing’s main center’s influence on residential land price is on the decline, while that of employment subcenters is on the rise, although their influence and scope of influence remain limited; (3) the impact of different employment subcenters on land prices is significantly different. The impact of Zhongguancun is very significant, while that of other employment sub-centers is relatively limited, particularly the “new town” employment subcenter. Based on this, this paper argues that with the development of subcenters of employment, their influence on urban development will become increasingly obvious. Therefore, urban policy-makers need to consider this influence and make corresponding strategic adjustments.

Using Individual GPS Trajectories to Explore Foodscape Exposure: A Case Study in Beijing Metropolitan Area.

With the growing interest in studying the characteristics of people’s access to the food environment and its influence upon individual health, there has been a focus on assessing individual food exposure based on GPS trajectories. However, existing studies have largely focused on the overall activity space using short-period trajectories, which ignores the complexity of human movements and the heterogeneity of the spaces that are experienced by the individual over daily life schedules. In this study, we propose a novel framework to extract the exposure areas consisting of the localized activity spaces around daily life centers and non-motorized commuting routes from long-term GPS trajectories. The newly proposed framework is individual-specific and can incorporate the internal heterogeneity of individual activities (spatial extent, stay duration, and timing) in different places as well as the dynamics of the context. A pilot study of the GeoLife dataset suggests that there are significant variations in the magnitude as well as the composition of the food environment in different parts of the individual exposure area, and residential environment is not representative of the overall foodscape exposure.

Decentralization and Polycentricity: Spatial Changes of Employment in Beijing Metropolitan Area, China

Decentralization and polycentric spatial structure strategies are important ways to alleviate urban disease in China. However, whether the urban spatial structure is meeting expectations is still unknown. Taking the Beijing Metropolitan Area as a case, the author adopted a non-parametric method to identify the subcenters, then an employment density model was used to analyze the spatial changes of employment and the employment centers’ impacts on the urban spatial structure. The results show that the Beijing Metropolitan Area was undergoing processes of employment decentralization, the monocentric structure was obvious throughout this time, but the polycentric model prevailed. The spatial structure of the Beijing Metropolitan Area was characterized as depicting “all centers aggregation” and the spatial structure of the central district of Beijing can be described as “subcenter agglomeration” between 2004 and 2013. The spatial structure became increasingly polycentric in the Beijing Metropolitan Area, but became more scattered in the central district.

Concentration Levels, Pollution Characteristics and Potential Ecological Risk of Dust Heavy Metals in the Metropolitan Area of Beijing, China

This study aims to investigate the concentration levels, pollution characteristics and the associated potential ecological risks of the heavy metals found in dust in the metropolitan area of Beijing, China during the winter. Dust samples were collected at 49 different spatial locations of Beijing’s metropolitan area from November 2013 to January 2014, in which the concentration levels of Cd, Cr, Pb, Cu, Zn, Ni, Co, V, Bi and Mo were measured by Elan DRC II type inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Test results showed that the concentrations of dust heavy metals Pb, Cr, Cu and Zn in the urban areas (147.1 mg·kg−1, 195.9 mg·kg−1, 239.2 mg·kg−1 and 713.2 mg·kg−1) were significantly higher than those in the suburbs (91.6 mg·kg−1, 125.1 mg·kg−1, 131.9 mg·kg−1 and 514.5 mg·kg−1). Enrichment factors and the geo-accumulation index were used to describe the pollution characteristics of dust heavy metals in urban and suburban areas. Results indicated that Zn and Cu were moderately polluting in both urban and suburban areas, Cd was severely polluting in urban areas and heavily polluting in the suburbs. Furthermore, potential ecological risk assessment revealed that the degrees of ecological harm of dust heavy metals were very strong in both urban and suburban areas, but especially in urban areas. The potential ecological risk of heavy metal Cd, whose single factor of ecological damage was extremely strong, accounted for about 90% of the total ecological risk.

Exploring the differential impacts of urban transit system on the spatial distribution of local and floating population in Beijing

The floating population has become the main driver of urban population excessive growth in China’s mega cities. Urban transit system (UTS) is a significant factor in population spatial distributions within urban areas, especially rapid and high-capacity transit systems. This paper analyzes the causal effects of the extension of expressways and subways between 2000 and 2010 in the Beijing Metropolitan Area (BMA), focusing on the group differences between the local residents and the floating population. Due to the endogeneity of transportation improvements and population growth, Instrumental Variable (IV) regression model is applied to avoid this problem. The results show the local residents increased in the inner suburbs but decreased in the city center, while the floating population increased in the majority areas. IV regression results show that the extension of urban transit systems had statistically significant impacts on population growth across the BMA. The results also show that the extension of urban subway system had more effects on the floating population than the local residents across the BMA. It is mainly caused by the rather low fare of urban subway system. This implies that the excessive subsidy on urban subway system could result in excessive floating population growth and residential differentiation, even residential segregation. Hence, it is necessary to plan and design reasonable and scientific urban transit systems in order to advance reasonable population size and promote residential integration. Moreover, the regional analysis shows that the effects of urban transportation improvements on the local residents are not statistically significant in the inner suburbs. It implies that urban transportation improvements had limited effects on inducing people to move to suburban areas and controlling center city’s population in Beijing. Therefore, it should be stressed the differentiated effects of urban transportation improvements on population distribution in the process of urban planning and population control.

Assessing the importance of cultural ecosystem services in urban areas of Beijing municipality

The world is rapidly urbanising, with both positive and negative consequences. One major challenge is how to secure the long-term quality of life for urban residents. Many studies on quality of life are based on ‘material’ ecosystem services (i.e., provisioning and regulating services), with less attention paid to the non-material benefits gained from nature (e.g., green and blue spaces), which have been called cultural ecosystem services (CES). However, these non-material services are often most important to urban residents. Understanding perceptions and awareness of CES provided by urban blue space (i.e., water and wetlands) and green space (i.e., urban forest and grassland) are therefore important to support planning, creation, and protection of these spaces. To tackle these problems, we assessed and quantified the CES provided by urban green and blue space in six metropolitan areas of Beijing. By combining ecosystem services valuation with surveys (466 questionnaires and 16 expert interviews), we gained insights into residents’ perceptions of CES. Surprisingly, blue areas in metropolitan Beijing were valued at least 4.3 times higher than the value of green areas. More than 80% of the residents were willing to pay for maintenance of urban blue and green areas (an average of almost 64RMB/year). The contributions of cultural services are likely to increase if stakeholders value natural ecosystems more in urban areas than in rural or mountainous areas because of the additional value of these rare resources in densely populated areas.

Changes in Wind Speed under Heat Waves Enhance Urban Heat Islands in the Beijing Metropolitan Area

AbstractThe interaction between urban heat islands (UHIs) and heat waves (HWs) is studied using measurements collected at two towers in the Beijing, China, metropolitan area and an analytical model. Measurements show that 1) the positive interaction between UHIs and HWs not only exists at the surface but also persists to higher levels (up to ~70 m) and 2) the urban wind speed is enhanced by HWs during daytime but reduced during nighttime as compared with its rural counterpart. A steady-state advection–diffusion model coupled to the surface energy balance equation is then employed to understand the implication of changes in wind speed on UHIs, which reveals that the observed changes in wind speed positively contribute to the interaction between UHIs and HWs in both daytime and nighttime. The vertical structure of the positive interaction between UHIs and HWs is thus likely an outcome resulting from a combination of changes in the surface energy balance and wind profile.

Between haven and heaven in cities: A comparison between Beijing (China) and Utrecht (the Netherlands)

Although heterogeneity exists, Western countries can generally be characterised by a more individualistic orientation, whereas China is a more collectivist-oriented society that is undergoing a transformation. This empirical study examined socio-cultural differences between cities in China and the Netherlands in terms of companionship and urban meeting places on the basis of activity diary surveys conducted in the metropolitan areas of Beijing and Utrecht. The focus was on activity decision-making in daily life, especially on the meaning of ‘feeling at home’. Companionship and relevant meeting places were controlled for socio-demographics, analysed and compared in both metropolitan areas. The results show that in Beijing, the majority of activities are undertaken with members of the nuclear and extended family, and the home (‘haven’) is a place for intimate contacts with family members. In Utrecht, the share of individual activities and activities undertaken with friends is much higher than in Beijing, and the home (‘heaven’) is open for contacts with self-selected friends. The modelling results indicate that socio-cultural differences work through various socio-demographic variables, such as gender, family structure and educational level, providing some insights for policymakers.

How does sprawl differ across urban built-up land types in China? A spatial-temporal analysis of the Beijing metropolitan area using granted land parcel data

The inner structure of urban built-up land sprawl (UBLS) is crucial for the level and quality of urbanization. This paper attempts an in-depth analysis of the inner structure of UBLS based on site data of granted built-up land parcels within the Beijing Metropolitan Area from 2001 to 2012. Structure entropy analysis and kernel density estimation (KDE) are employed to characterize the spatial-temporal variation of different types of UBLS and to summarize their patterns. The results reveal that during the sprawl process, residential land expanded rapidly in the first half of the study period while industrial land expanded rapidly in the second half. Residential land sprawl illustrated “radial sprawl”, with a trend of “living suburbanization”; commercial land tended to follow the pattern of “ribbon sprawl along the main roads”; and industrial land sprawl was scattered in a “leapfrog sprawl” pattern. These results reveal the particular characteristics of the coexistence of market mechanisms and government macro-control of the land market in China. The land analysed in this study does not present the high-efficiency circle-layer land-use structure. Driven by top-down power allocations and the GDP-dominated views of local governments, the land supply inclined toward structural imbalance, which generated a disordered urban spatial structure. Hence, we suggest formulating a market-driven land supply mechanism to adjust the land-use supply structure, which has important implications for optimizing urban land-use structure.

A case study of urbanization impact on summer precipitation in the Greater Beijing Metropolitan Area: Urban heat island versus aerosol effects

Convection-resolving ensemble simulations using the WRF-Chem model coupled with a single-layer Urban Canopy Model are conducted to investigate the individual and combined impacts of land use and anthropogenic pollutant emissions from urbanization on a heavy rainfall event in the Greater Beijing Metropolitan Area (GBMA) in China. The simulation with the urbanization effect included generally captures the spatial pattern and temporal variation of the rainfall event. An improvement of precipitation is found in the experiment including aerosol effect on both clouds and radiation. The expanded urban land cover and increased aerosols have an opposite effect on precipitation processes, with the latter playing a more dominant role, leading to suppressed convection and rainfall over the upstream (northwest) area, and enhanced convection and more precipitation in the downstream (southeast) region of the GBMA. In addition, the influence of aerosol indirect effect is found to overwhelm that of direct effect on precipitation in this rainfall event. Increased aerosols lead to more cloud droplets with smaller size, which favor evaporative cooling and reduce updrafts and suppress convection over the upstream (northwest) region in the early stage of the rainfall event. As the rainfall system propagates southeastward, more latent heat is released due to the freezing of larger number of smaller cloud drops that are lofted above the freezing level, which is responsible for the increased updraft strength and convective invigoration over the downstream (southeast) area.

Mechanism of Urbanization Impact on a Summer Cold-Frontal Rainfall Process in the Greater Beijing Metropolitan Area

AbstractThe WRF–Noah–urban canopy model (UCM) coupled modeling system is used to investigate the influence of urbanization on a typical frontal rainfall event that occurred in June 2008 over the greater Beijing metropolitan area (GBMA). The comparison between results of two experiments with and without the presence of urban areas suggests that more precipitation can be induced over and in the area downwind of Beijing because of the urbanization effects while less rainfall is found in the upwind region of central urban areas. The urbanization effects delay the onset of precipitation over Beijing but keep it sustained for a longer period with stronger rainfall intensity. The underlying urban surface not only retards the cold-frontal movement but also favors the development of a wet and unstable atmosphere. This explains why the precipitation can be sustained for a longer time with higher rainfall intensity over urban areas. From analyses of a density-current speed equation, it is found that the abrupt pressure jump during the frontal passage has a significant influence on the cold-frontal movement. A method derived from the surface pressure tendency equation is used to explore the mechanism of urban effects on the cold-frontal system. The cold advection is less intense in the experiment with urban land surface than in the experiment with urban areas replaced by cropland. Hence, the weaker-than-normal cold advection and subsequent smaller pressure jump during the frontal passage over the GBMA are the major mechanisms behind the urbanization effects, which lead to the retardation of the cold-frontal movement and late onset of precipitation over the GBMA.

Evolution of jobs-housing spatial relationship in Beijing Metropolitan Area: A job accessibility perspective

With the urban expansion and economic restructuring, the jobs-housing relationship has become an important issue in studies on urban spatial structure. This paper employed a job accessibility model, which is an evaluation instrument to measure the jobs-housing relationship in Beijing Metropolitan Area from a job accessibility perspective. The results indicate that the population in the central city is declining, whereas the population in the suburbs is consistently growing and forming new population centers. However, the distribution pattern of employment is still highly centralized. Job accessibility varies in different locations, but the inner-city areas (within the Third Ring road) have seen improved job accessibility over time while job accessibility in the suburbs (especially outside the Fourth Ring road) has decreased, and this has led it to become a primary area of residential and employment mismatch. At the same time, the new towns in the outer suburbs have not yet demonstrated great potential to attract more jobs. In addition we find that, to some extent, urban planning changes the jobs-housing relationship, but a polycentric urban spatial structure is not yet evident. The floating population and related housing policy also affect the jobs-housing relationship. We propose some measures to resolve the spatial mismatch as well as some future research directions.

Intercomparison between Spatiotemporal Distribution of PM2.5 Concentration and Transportation in Beijing

A spatial and temporal distribution of PM2.5 as one of the most critical pollutants in Beijing was studied for the whole year 2013. In this pre-research work the spatiotemporal variation of PM2.5 in studied over metropolitan area of Beijing in 2013. More over a weighted transportation influence ( WIT) is defined to monitor the role of transportation in PM2.5 pollution. The results show the remarkable effect of transportation in PM2.5 concentration (R2=0.75). Plus, with this research, we give more information about the source of high PM2.5 concentration in Beijing, and suggest to control this matter transportation is one of the notable source which requires more attention from decision makers.

Ensemble simulations of the urban effect on a summer rainfall event in the Great Beijing Metropolitan Area

The Great Beijing Metropolitan Area (GBMA), located in North China, is one of the most rapidly developing regions in the world. In this study, ensemble simulations are conducted to investigate the urban effects on a summertime heavy rainfall event in the GBMA. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model that couples with a single-layer Urban Canopy Model (UCM) is used for the ensemble simulation. Results show that the ensemble simulation with a realistic land-use representation of urban areas (i.e. control run) can well reproduce the spatial distribution and temporal variation of the rainfall event. The simulated total precipitation agrees well with observation. Compared with the sensitivity ensemble simulation, in which the urban area is replaced by cropland, the control run generates more precipitation over the southwest of Beijing, while less rainfall is found in the area to the northeast of Beijing. This result suggests that the underlying urban surface and urban canopy physics in the surface layer have remarkable impacts on precipitation. The stronger upward motion along with larger convergence and more moisture transportation caused by the urban dynamic and thermodynamic effects directly contribute to the differences in rainfall distribution between the control run and the sensitivity run. In addition, the urban effects are found to slow the cold front movement due to the intense warm air over the urban area, leading to a delayed occurrence of the peak rainfall. However, the slow-moving cold front over the urban area enhances the maximum precipitation intensity. The evolution of the rainfall pattern during the intensification period of the precipitation event is dependent on the movement of the cold front in both the control and sensitivity experiments, indicating that urban effects tend to modify the precipitation distribution and influence the temporal variation of the rainfall process.

Monitoring bidecadal development of urban agglomeration with remote sensing images in the Jing-Jin-Tang area, China

As an important urban agglomeration of China, the Jing-Jin-Tang area has experi- enced intense urbanization since the 1980s. This study explores the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban areas in this region using multitemporal Landsat images. An enhanced built-up (BU) index method was applied to extract BU areas with an overall accuracy ranging from 75% to 91.35%. Seven spatial metrics were used to discern urban growth patterns at city and county levels. The results indicate that all cities witnessed a rapid growth of BU areas with different spatial patterns. Beijing has been aggregating since the 1990s and a large homogeneous urban patch has formed. The construction and development of metropolitan Beijing and Tianjin started in the early 1980s and became almost fully developed by the end of 1990. Tangshan, like many medium-sized cities in China, is still enduring a development process with an accelerating pace. The metropolitan areas of Beijing and Tianjin have been greatly developed with BU densities exceeding 90% since 2000, compared with Tangshan's 55% in 2010. These results provide spatial information on the evolution of urban extent in the period of 1990s to 2010s in this region. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original pub- lication, including its DOI. (DOI: 10.1117/1.JRS.8.084592) The Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan (a.k.a. Jing-Jin-Tang) urban agglomeration is mainly com- posed of three adjacent cities: Beijing, Tianjin, and Tangshan in northern China. It is located at the heart of the Bohai Economic Rim, and plays a vital role in the nation's economic growth. 3 This area has experienced intense urbanization since the national economic reform of the late 1980s. The rapid growth of built-up (BU) areas has brought great pressure to local environment and has led to serious environmental problems such as water shortage, air/water pollution, and vegetation degradation, especially in overpopulated areas. Air pollution results in significant neg- ative health impacts on the large population in cities like Beijing. 4 Dumping solid waste on the

Impact of a Detailed Urban Parameterization on Modeling the Urban Heat Island in Beijing Using TEB-RAMS

The Town Energy Budget (TEB) model coupled with the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) is applied to simulate the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon in the metropolitan area of Beijing. This new model with complex and detailed surface conditions, called TEB-RAMS, is from Colorado State University (CSU) and the ASTER division of Mission Research Corporation. The spatial-temporal distributions of daily mean 2 m air temperature are simulated by TEB-RAMS during the period from 0000 UTC 01 to 0000 UTC 02 July 2003 over the area of 116°E~116.8°E, 39.6°N~40.2°N in Beijing. The TEB-RAMS was run with four levels of two-way nested grids, and the finest grid is at 1 km grid increment. An Anthropogenic Heat (AH) source is introduced into TEB-RAMS. A comparison between the Land Ecosystem-Atmosphere Feedback model (LEAF) and the detailed TEB parameterization scheme is presented. The daily variations and spatial distribution of the 2 m air temperature agree well with the observations of the Beijing area. The daily mean 2 m air temperature simulated by TEB-RAMS with the AH source is 0.6 K higher than that without specifying TEB and AH over the metropolitan area of Beijing. The presence of urban underlying surfaces plays an important role in the UHI formation. The geometric morphology of an urban area characterized by road, roof, and wall also seems to have notable effects on the UHI intensity. Furthermore, the land-use dataset from USGS is replaced in the model by a new land-use map for the year 2010 which is produced by the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The simulated regional mean 2 m air temperature is 0.68 K higher from 01 to 02 July 2003 with the new land cover map.