Environmental economic geography:Recent advances and innovative development

Modern environmental problems are the result of human-environment interaction in the process of industrial-ization.The relationship between economic development and environmental quality is an important aspect of understanding human-environment interaction and has been widely concerned by multidisciplinary researchers.Economic geography(EG)is a discipline that mainly focuses on the location and connections of economic activi-ties.EG has developed to environmental economic geography(EEG)by incorporating environmental factors into its research framework,considering the operational mechanism of the co-evolution of economy and environment,and the dynamic process of green transition of techno-economic paradigms.Studying the resource and environ-mental effects of R&D,production,trade,and other aspects of the economic cycle is beneficial to realizing the“greening”economy.This paper traces the background and theoretical development path of EEG and elaborates on the interaction between EEG and other research paradigms on environmental problems.In recent years,the focuses of EEG are as follows:(1)the“location-environment”relationship of production from the perspective of local actors;(2)the“GVC/GPN-environment”relationship of multinational enterprises and space of flows from the perspective of the global network;(3)the“trade/circulation-environment”relationship from the perspective of national linkages;and(4)the co-evolution of the economic system and environment from the perspective of synergistic evolution,with a focus on innovation and institutional forces.The future development trend of EEG is combined with the endogenous growth theory and the sustainable development theory,mainly from the aspects of endogenous,system integration and multi-scale,to explain the differences in environmental issues of differ-ent regional economic activities,and to promote the development of EEG theory and interdisciplinary research,strengthening the construction of global and regional sustainable development system.

The concept, structure and characteristics of the distributed virtual coal-mine geographical environment

Distributed virtual coal-mine geography environment（CM-DVGE） researches the virtual reality simulation of coal-mine environment in cyberspace and the performance of coal production process. The goal is to deal with the practical safety problems of observation, analysis, design and training during the underground coal production process. This paper first probed into the evolution of CM-DVGE from a historical point of view, then respectively analyzed the characteristics of its physical progressive levels according to the cognitivd law and its logical structure of data on the basis of data flow, and concluded by putting forward the prospect of the application of CM-DVGE, thus enriched and developed the method of synthetic study of coal mine.

Eco-districts in France:What tools to ensure goals achievement?

Globally,to build cities and communities more inclusive,safe,resilient and sustainable is one of the most important sustainable development goals.Eco-districts in cities emerged as an answer to current global environmental concerns and have been developed in France since the 1990s.The objective of this work is to gather operational feedback from sustainable neighborhood projects owners to better understand the key barriers of such projects and how to overcome them.A case study of the eco-district Les Tanneries,Lingolsheim showed that the carbon footprint of each inhabitant annually amounted to 4 tons CO2 equivalent,more than half of the French average.Rooms for improvements were clearly identified regarding transports and food carbon footprint.Indicators for energy consumption,social diversity and density reached the level of the eco-districts average.A governance review pointed out some superior practices such as the formalization of a specification requirements handbook,a competition between project management teams,and the use of neighborhood sustainability assessment tools to measure and track changes in performance.The validated tools and obtained results can be useful in building sustainable cities and even China’s ecological civilization.