Impact of high-speed railway construction on spatial relationships in the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration

The Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration is a response to the Belt and Road Initiative in Northwest China that aims to promote regional development.The direct impact of high-speed railway construction is to shorten the spatial-temporal distance among regions,improve the accessibility of regional transportation,and promote socioeconomic linkages.From the perspective of accessibility,this study analyzes the impact of high-speed railway construction on the spatial pattems and county-level economic relationships of the Guanzhong Plain urban agglom-eration.The results show that the construction of high-speed railway significantly improves regional accessibility,increases the potential for urban economic development,and gradually narrows the gaps in economic potential among cities.The construction of high-speed railway has increased the intensity of extenal economic relations among numerous counties in the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration,and most of the areas with increased connections are located in the direction of routes extension.The development of the internal economic network of the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration is unbalanced,and a complex network is gradually emerging with a few large cities at the core,but the construction of high-speed railway is changing the struicture of the economic network.In general,a certain degree of intrinsic coupling exists between regional accessibility change and the evolution of economic relations caused by high-speed railway,reflecting the requirements of the regional overall development strategy.

Spatial expansion effects on urban ecosystem services supply-demand mismatching in Guanzhong Plain Urban Agglomeration of China

Global urbanization has led to drastic land use change,interfering the ecosystem services(ES)supply-demand balance,in turn threatening the well-being of humans.However,existing studies mainly stranded at the historical and current analysis,and the effects of urban spatial expansion on the relationship between ES supply and demand in the future are less clear,in particular at an urban agglomeration scale.This study was constructed with a framework of assessing the effects of urban spatial expansion on ES supply-demand mismatching under different future scenarios in the Guanzhong Plain Urban Agglomeration(GPUA)by using the Future Land Use Simulation(FLUS)model and expert-based Land-Use and Land-Cover Change(LUCC)matrix.The results showed that:(1)Urban expansion is significant in the natural development(ND)scenario,mainly manifesting the great transfer of dry land to construction land.(2)The gap between total ES supply and demand is narrowed from 2000 to 2030 and the mismatch between ES supply and demand is mainly reflected in the spatial distribution pattern in the GPUA.The ES budgets were in high surplus in Northern Qinling Mountains and northeast mountain areas,while they were in severe deficit in urban center areas.The budgets deficit under the ND scenario in 2030 is the most severe.(3)The gradient differences of ES budgets of the GPUA between urban centers and suburbs increase from 2000 to 2030 under two scenarios.The deficit region expands largest under ND scenario.The findings revealed that ES declining and supply-demand mismatching were triggered by the drastic land-use change driven by rapid urban expansion.The expansion has brought about an increasing material demand and growing industries,threatening the sustainability of ecosystems.Scenarios setting could contribute to coordinating the relationship between future urban development and ecological protection,and the policy strategies proposed in the study could inform ecological management and urban planning in the regions facing the similar urbanization situation.