Excess Commuting in Transitional Urban China:A Case Study of Guangzhou

During the reform era, Chinese cities witnessed dramatic institutional transformation and spatial restructuring in general and profound change of commuting patterns in particular. Using household surveys collected in Guangzhou, China, in 2001, 2005 and 2010, excess commuting measurements are estimated. Excess commuting shows an overall trend of increasing during 1990–1999, and then declining during 2000–2010. We argue that deepening marketization of the jobs and housing sectors has induced spatial separation of jobs and housing. In other words, institutional transition and urban spatial restructuring are underpinning the changes of commuting patterns in Chinese cities. Excess commuting has strong relationship with individual socio-demographic status, which is by and large due to the increasing flexibilities of jobs and housing location choices enjoyed by urban residents. The findings call for considerations on balancing jobs-housing in making public policies relevant to urban development in general, and land use and transportation in particular.

Urban Redevelopment, Gentrification and Gentrifiers in Post-reform Inland China: A Case Study of Chengdu, China

Since its process evolved in recent years, the definition of gentrification has expanded to cover different forms of social upgrading, new spaces and new actors around the world. Studies on gentrification in Chinese cities began to take off in the 2000 s. However, they all mainly focused on the newly emerging global cities and there has been a lack of investigation on provincial cities. Furthermore, discussions on gentrifiers′ profiles and their motivations for housing choice are absent from literature on Chinese gentrification. Therefore, this paper aims to assess the relevance of the broad definition of gentrification in provincial Chinese cities through empirical research on urban redevelopment projects in Chengdu, and to examine the characteristics of gentrifiers(as new incoming residents) in it. The results show the rationality of gentrification processes as urban redevelopment in Chengdu, and reveal original outcomes on the corresponding gentrifiers′ profiles and the motivations behind their housing choice, which are different from the general features of gentrifiers in standard Western gentrification research.

Cooling effect of urban parks and their relationship with urban heat islands

It is claimed that open spaces in cities, such as parks, have an urban cooling effect. However, the relationship between urban parks and adjacent districts is still not explicit. In order to clarify the interaction between urban parks and their urban surroundings, this paper takes the Temple of Heaven Park （THP） as an example of a park station and focuses on analyzing the differences with a nearby urban station.THP is located in the center of Beijing, and the nearest urban station is Tian An Men. It is interesting that the cooling effect of THP reaches a peak and remains stable when its city background urban heat island （UHI） varies within a given range, but becomes unstable when the UHI goes beyond the range. This is called an enhanced cooling effect in this paper. As a result, the UHi intensities （UHIIs） are calculated in order to comprehend the role of the park cooling effect in the urban heating characteristics of Beijing. By comparison with five other park-district pairs, this paper attempts to identify the causes of the enhanced cooling effect. It is found that six park-district pairs consistently demonstrate a persistently stronger cooling rate during the night, and that the water coverage might be a key factor in enhancing the park cooling effect. Based on further investigation of the influence of surrounding UHIs on the park cooling effect, it is found that the UHII differences in park-district pairs show quasi-linear changes within a given range as the UHli of the surrounding district increases.

北京三里屯之演化——三里屯Village实例分析

分析北京三里屯Village项目的背景、设计发展过程、使用情况等,探讨、总结项目的经验和设计方法,评估项目的实际运作效果和存在的问题,提出改善建议和未来展望,作为探讨中国现代城市发展的实例参照。

Urban expansion in China and its effect on cultivated land before and after initiating"Reform and Open Policy"

Urbanization in China has expanded at an unprecedented speed since the declaration of "Reform and Open Policy"and presented many challenges. Unbalanced regional development, appearance of super megacities and concomitant problems,and conflicts between urbanization and cultivated land protection are three critical problems that Chinese urbanization has to face. To develop new plans for foreseeable future urbanization in China, it is critical to understand the evolving history of cities across China. This study maps urban expansion of 60 typical Chinese cities based on large amount of remote sensing data and the labor-intensive image interpretation method, in order to understand the history of urban expansion from the 1970 s to 2013.Results showed that area of cities expanded 5.23 times compared to their area in the 1970 s. Urban expansion in China accelerated three times(1988–1996, 1999–2006, and 2009–2011) and decelerated three times(1997–1998, 2007–2008, and 2012–2013) over the 40 years. The urban area of South China expanded most significantly 9.42 times, while the urban area in Northeast China expanded only 2.37 times. The disparity among different administrative ranks of cities was even greater than(3.81 times) the differences among different regions. Super megacities have been continuously expanding at a fast rate(8.60-fold), and have not shown obvious signs of slowing down. The proportion of cultivated land among the land sources for urban expansion decreased to a small extent in the 1990 s, but cultivated land continues to be the major land source for urban expansion. Effective future urbanization needs controlling the expansion scale of large cities and reasonably developing medium and small cities, as well as balancing regional development.