Exploring the Path of Shantytown Renewal Based on the Theory of Environment-behavior Studies: A Case Study of the Northwest Area of Saihantala in Baotou City

The application of environment-behavior studies plays an important role in studying the renewal of shantytowns.One of the most humane ways of renewal is designing and constructing the necessary urban spatial environment from the perspective of human daily behavior.Most of the shantytown renovation projects currently carried out in China are mainly focused on demolition and reconstruction,which not only incurs high costs but also damages the original social structure and economic model.During the process of shantytown renewal,it should improve the urban landscape,living environment,and life quality of residents,and ensure the daily life of shantytown residents without increasing their economic burden,and preserve the traces of urban development.In order to achieve this goal,it should explore the renewal strategies of shantytowns from the perspective of environment-behavior studies through behavior maps,on-site research,and literature review.Updating and design from a human perspective often achieve faster and better development;the renewal of shantytowns should be a bottom-up approach and start from a grassroots perspective,completing the renovation design through the composition of the population and behavioral patterns.

An Evolutionary Economic Geography Perspective on Types of Operation Development in West Lake, China

The types of operation play a key role in facilitating tourism consumption and economic development in a tourism destination. By adopting evolutionary economic geography theory, the paper analyzes the types of operation in West Lake Scenic Area from 1978 to 2013. First, an evolution process consisting of four stages is underpinned, and they are: the new establishment stage, the preliminary development stage, the speedup development stage, and the stabilized maturity stage. Specifically, the distinct characteristics associated with operation types are compared and evaluated at different stages throughout the process. The evolution trees are introduced to scrutinize types of operation development. The results of evolution trees demonstrate the substantial increase in both numbers and types. Second, by applying GIS spatial analysis, the paper also analyzes the spatial evolution characteristics on the types of operation, and the results unveil the co-existence of centripetal and centrifugal forces: the processes of spatial agglomeration and spatial dispersion. More specifically, we recognize the spatial process includes the emergence of node and concentration(1978–1995), the sparse distribution and intensity reduction(1996–2002), the patchy distribution and spatial agglomeration intensification(2003–2008), the dispersed distribution and core area agglomeration(2009–2013). Lastly, path dependence on resource endowment, government and market innovation, knowledge learning and spillover can reasonably explain the types of operation evolution. In conclusion, the evolutionary economic geography theories provide new theoretical and empirical perspectives for tourism policy analysis. At the same time, our comprehensive evidences impart more comprehensive insights and offer useful managerial and policy implications.

Regional Economic Types and Development Strategy of Small Towns in Suburb Beijing

The purpose of this article is to classify the regional economic types and development dynamics of small towns in suburb Beijing by applying the classification methods developed by Nelson's method and Location Quotient method into 183 small towns in Beijing.Four types of small towns are thus identified,including urban agriculture dominated towns,manufacturing dominated towns,service industry dominated towns and comprehensive type towns with balanced economic development.Within the environment of geographical information system,the spatial distribution pattern of four types of small towns with their evolution trend is analyzed.The results indicate that four types of small towns have obvious'core-periphery'spatial structure but with different functional orientations and evolution mechanisms.Based on this,the different development strategies for each type of small towns are summarized,providing a scientific reference for the differentiating planning and development strategies of these small towns.

Understanding the Past,Present,and Future of China's Economic Development——Based on A Unified Framework of Growth Theories

Through exploring the limitation of the neoclassical theory of economic growth,which classifies growth as a homogenous process,this paper reconciles various theories of economic development and explains the rises and falls of economic growth under a unified framework,focusing on incentives of the accumulation of physical and human capital.This paper classifies instances of economic growth into four categories—the Malthusian poverty trap,the Lewis dual model of economic development,the Lewis turning point,and Solow neoclassical growth model.This paper conducts empirical analysis of these categories of economic development as they are relevant to Chinese economic growth and discusses policy implications therein.

Technical Efficiency in the Chinese Textile Industry

This paper presents a measurement of the technical efficiency of textile industries with 4-digit codes in China by using the cross-section data from 2002 and 2007 and a fully nonparametric stochastic frontier estimation approach. The technical efficiency of these textile industries is compared across six economic ownership types and across seven regions in China. This uncovers the effects of the proprietary characteristics and the location of a firm on its technical efficiency performance. The nonparametric estimation provides some interesting findings. First, textile production in China performs with a decreasing return to scale. The difference between the output elasticity of labor and that of capital decreases from the year 2002 to 2007. Second, the technical efficiency of the 4-digit textile industry in China is significantly contingent on its ownership and location. Privately-run textile enterprises on average perform with the highest level of technical efficiency among the six ownership types while state-owned enterprises perform with the lowest level of technical efficiency, whether or not the location dummies are accounted for. Third, the technical efficiency evaluated by regions follows the order： ＂eastern area 〉 southern area 〉 central area 〉 northern area,＂ which remains unchanged across the two years.