Quantitative measurement of the effects of administrative division adjustments on regional development

Administrative divisions are the important foundation of national governance and social development,and the adjustment of administrative divisions is a critical way to promote regional coordinated development.Under the background of globalization and regionalization,timely adjustment of administrative divisions is a major step to reconstruct the regional development pattern.In the perspective of regional coordinated development,this paper constructs an Administrative Rank Potential Energy(ARPE)model to explore the mechanisms of administrative division adjustment(ADA)under coordinated regional development based on the theory of regional interaction,spatial field energy model and power exponential function.The results show that:(1)The development potential and influence of an administrative region are closely related to the administrative jurisdiction,administrative resources,and the potential of regional coordinated development.(2)The growth rate of ARPE in the study area from 2010 to 2015 was 20.7% compared to the period 2005 to 2010,and the potential for coordinated development increased to 3.05% from 0.21% before the"cancelling"the prefecture-level city of Chaohu.(3)The measurement results of the usefulness of ADA can not only distinguish the complex impacts brought about by social development,but also accord with real social and economic development conditions.The ARPE focuses on the both regional integrated development and individual development,thereby serving as a reference for explaining and evaluating adjustments to administrative divisions at the macro-and micro-scales.

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.