Research on multilevel evaluations and zones of territorial spatial functions in Yibin, China

Objectively evaluating and defining territorial spatial functions are important prerequisites for optimizing the use of territorial space. However, the results of the evaluation of functions at different levels may differ significantly. How to integrate the evaluation results and guide the spatial utilization at different levels more effectively is worth exploring. This study takes as the research area Yibin City, China, a node city along the Yangtze River in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. In the study, 185 towns in that city were taken as the primary evaluation units for an indicator system of territorial spatial function constructed on the basis of multivariate data. Research methods such as the entropy method and cluster analysis were adopted to do multilevel evaluations and zoning of territorial spatial functions in Yibin City. The results suggest the following: 1) The distribution of agricultural production, rural living, and ecological regulation functions among the second-level production-living-ecological (PLE) functions of townships were relatively balanced in Yibin City. The production function of industry and mining, urban life function, and ecological product supply function showed spatial directivity. 2) The evaluation results of the first-level PLE functions of townships showed that the areas with substantial PLE functions accounted for approximately 20%, whereas the areas with insignificant functions accounted for approximately 80%, which reflected the “80/20 rule” of spatial functions. 3) In accordance with the cluster analysis of the multilevel evaluation results, the township functions in Yibin were divided into 5 functional areas: urban life-industrial production advantage areas (12%), urban life-rural life advantage areas (8%), rural life-agricultural production-ecological function product supply advantage areas (29%), rural life-agricultural production-ecological service function advantage areas (20%), and ecological service function-agricultural production function advantage areas (31%). 4) In the future, Yibin City should focus on 20% of the significant functional areas and attach importance to the relativity of spatial functions to form a high-quality territorial spatial protection and development pattern. Based on the objectives and requirements of the new territorial spatial planning in China, this study reconstructed the municipal territorial spatial functional areas through a multilevel functional evaluation, which has theoretical and practical significance for forming a new pattern of territorial spatial development and use with joint production, living, and ecological functions

Nonlinear Hierarchical Effects of Housing Prices and Built Environment Based on Multiscale Life Circle—A Case Study of Chengdu

Determining the optimal planning scale for urban life circles and analyzing the associated built environment factors are crucial for comprehending and regulating residential differentiation. This study aims to bridge the current research void concerning the nonlinear hierarchical relationships between the built environment and residential differentiation under the multiscale effect. Specifically, six indicators were derived from urban crowdsourcing data: diversity of built environment function (DBEF1), density of built environment function (DBEF2), blue–green environment (BGE), traffic accessibility (TA), population vitality (PV), and shopping vitality (SV). Then, a gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) was applied to derive the analysis of these indicators. Finally, the interpretability of machine learning was leveraged to quantify the relative importance and nonlinear relationships between built environment indicators and housing prices. The results indicate a hierarchical structure and inflection point effect of the built environment on residential premiums. Notably, the impact trend of the built environment on housing prices within a 15 min life circle remains stable. The effect of crowd behavior, as depicted by PV and SV, on housing prices emerges as the most significant factor. Furthermore, this study also categorizes housing into common and high-end residences, thereby unveiling that distinct residential neighborhoods exhibit varying degrees of dependence on the built environment. The built environment exerts a scale effect on the formation of residential differentiation, with housing prices exhibiting increased sensitivity to the built environment at a smaller life circle scale. Conversely, the effect of the built environment on housing prices is amplified at a larger life circle scale. Under the dual influence of the scale and hierarchical effect, this framework can dynamically adapt to the uncertainty of changes in life circle planning policies and residential markets. This provides strong theoretical support for exploring the optimal life circle scale, alleviating residential differentiation, and promoting group fairness

Spatial Equity of Multilevel Healthcare in the Metropolis of Chengdu, China: A New Assessment Approach

The spatial equity of the healthcare system is an important factor in assessing how the different medical service demands of residents are met by different levels of medical institutions. However, previous studies have not paid sufficient attention to multilevel healthcare accessibility based on both the divergence of hierarchical healthcare supplies and variations in residents’ behavioral preferences for different types of healthcare. This study aims to propose a demand-driven “2R grid-to-level„ (2R-GTL) method of analyzing the spatial equity in access to a multilevel healthcare system in Chengdu. Gridded populations, real-time travel distances and residents’ spatial behavioral preferences were used to generate a dynamic and accurate healthcare accessibility assessment. The results indicate that significant differences exist in the spatial accessibility to different levels of healthcare. Approximately 90% of the total population living in 57% of the total area in the city can access all three levels of healthcare within an acceptable travel distance, whereas multilevel healthcare shortage zones cover 42% of the total area and 12% of the population. A lack of primary healthcare is the most serious problem in these healthcare shortage zones. These results support the systematic monitoring of multilevel healthcare accessibility by decision-makers. The method proposed in this research could be improved by introducing nonspatial factors, private healthcare providers and other cultural contexts and time periods

Has Rural Migration Weakened Agricultural Cultivation? Evidence from the Mountains of Southwest China

Linkages between rural migration and agricultural restructuring have become a key aspect of rapid urbanization in developing countries and a research focus for optimizing rural–urban development and rural reconstruction. Using continuous statistical data from the mountains of Southwest China, we examined the structure, changes and regional differences in agricultural cultivation under urbanization, analyzed the reasons for the restructuring of agricultural cultivation, and revealed the adaptation linkages between the rural–urban transition and agricultural restructuring. The results showed that land-use changes and rural migration caused by urbanization significantly affected the cultivation structure and its change trends: the proportion of food crops decreased, while the proportion of vegetables and orchards increased. However, regional differences in the agricultural cultivation structure were significant in the various township zones. Rural migration weakened agricultural cultivation in the lake basin and nationality townships but enhanced agricultural cultivation in the river valley townships. On the basis of the adaptation linkages of urbanization, rural migration, agricultural intensification, cultivation structure and economic development, chain-type changes and adaptation processes between rural migration and agricultural restructuring were demonstrated. These findings indicate that favorable locations and appropriate policies can promote the integration and restructuring of smallholder agriculture for commercialization and intensification and vice versa

Sustainable Livelihood of Rural Elderly Farmers in Poverty Alleviation Areas from the Perspective of Active Aging: Analysis of the Path for Integrating Individual and Spatial Perspectives

The phenomenon of population aging has become an important issue affecting the sustainable economic and social development of China's countryside, but few studies exist within the academic community on the sustainable livelihoods of rural elderly farmers in areas of poverty alleviation. Based on a 2022 field survey in Guzhang County, Hunan Province, this study examined the sustainable livelihood pathways of elderly rural farmers in these areas through non-participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and grounded theory methods of textual analysis. Study findings show that in the face of rural hollowing out caused by the outflow of the young labor force due to rapid urbanization, a large number of rural elderly farmers in poverty alleviation areas are facing the livelihood dilemma of rural pension structure constraints and the rational choice of agriculture. The background for this situation involves the insufficiency of the original pension model and multiple welfare sources, a shortage of medical and health service facilities, and the transformation of intergenerational relations. Therefore, based on the advantages of rural social networks in poverty alleviation areas in the three active aging dimensions of health, participation, and guarantee, this paper presents a sustainable livelihood research paradigm in which the individual, rural, and socioeconomic networks and rural production-living-ecological space of elderly farmers in poverty alleviation areas coordinate with each other. The paper also introduces a logical framework for the sustainable livelihood of elderly farmers that is consistent with the goal of rural revitalization through the thrust of nearby urbanization. Specific sustainable livelihood paths integrating individual spaces include the following: 1) at the individual level, through the individual livelihood behavior and livelihood capital of elderly farmers dynamically adjusting to the corresponding sources of welfare and livelihood modes with changes in the life cycle, 2) at the field space level, through the sixth industry, integrated development of modern factors intervening in the establishment of rural market industrial support to cope with aging, and 3) at the territorial space level, according to the rural elderly . The social circle structure of rural households is used to reshape the living, production, and ecological aging life circle. This study analyzed the sustainable livelihood paths of rural elderly farmers in poverty alleviation areas from individual to spatial perspectives The findings provide a theoretical basis and practical references for the revitalization of rural people in these areas in the era of rapid aging

The Features of Rural Labor Transfer and Cultural Differences: Evidence from China’s Southwest Mountainous Areas

Large-scale rural labor transfer is considered an important means of promoting urbanization and poverty alleviation; however, it has been difficult to fully reveal the complexity of mountain labor transfer using traditional theory. In this study, macrostatistics and microsurvey data were employed to conduct an empirical analysis of rural labor transfer in Xichang, highlighting the regional features of rural labor transfer in the southwest mountainous areas of China. The results show that the employment structure of rural labor is dominated by agriculture; however, its proportion is decreasing annually. The development of secondary and tertiary industries significantly contributes to the non-agricultural employment of rural laborers, who transfer mainly to the building, industry, and consumption fields—especially consumption, which has the greatest ability to absorb surplus rural labor. Migration of the population and farmers’ per capita net income promotes rural labor transfer, while the amount of rural labor, the urbanization rate in townships, agricultural development, and the topography have lagged effects on the process. This study argues that rural labor transfer in the mountains has regionality, multi-pattern, and gradient features; therefore, the promotion of rural labor transfer should consider local urbanization and poverty alleviation in such a manner that aligns with the local natural and socioeconomic conditions of the mountainous areas

Dynamic Spatial-Temporal Graph Convolutional Neural Networks for Traffic Forecasting

Graph convolutional neural networks (GCNN) have become an increasingly active field of research. It models the spatial dependencies of nodes in a graph with a pre-defined Laplacian matrix based on node distances. However, in many application scenarios, spatial dependencies change over time, and the use of fixed Laplacian matrix cannot capture the change. To track the spatial dependencies among traffic data, we propose a dynamic spatio-temporal GCNN for accurate traffic forecasting. The core of our deep learning framework is the finding of the change of Laplacian matrix with a dynamic Laplacian matrix estimator. To enable timely learning with a low complexity, we creatively incorporate tensor decomposition into the deep learning framework, where real-time traffic data are decomposed into a global component that is stable and depends on long-term temporal-spatial traffic relationship and a local component that captures the traffic fluctuations. We propose a novel design to estimate the dynamic Laplacian matrix of the graph with above two components based on our theoretical derivation, and introduce our design basis. The forecasting performance is evaluated with two realtime traffic datasets. Experiment results demonstrate that our network can achieve up to 25% accuracy improvement

Spatio-temporal distribution, spillover effects and influences of China's two levels of public healthcare resources

In China, upper-level healthcare (ULHC) and lower-level healthcare (LLHC) provide different public medical and health services. Only when these two levels of healthcare resources are distributed equally and synergistically can the public's demands for healthcare be met fairly. Despite a number of previous studies having analysed the spatial distribution of healthcare and its determinants, few have evaluated the differences in spatial equity between ULHC and LLHC and investigated their institutional, geographical and socioeconomic influences and spillover effects. This study aims to bridge this gap by analysing panel data on the two levels of healthcare resources in 31 Chinese provinces covering the period 2003⁻2015 using Moran's I models and dynamic spatial Durbin panel models (DSDMs). The results indicate that, over the study period, although both levels of healthcare resources improved considerably in all regions, spatial disparities were large. The spatio-temporal characteristics of ULHC and LLHC differed, although both levels were relatively low to the north-west of the Hu Huanyong Line. DSDM analysis revealed direct and indirect effects at both short-and long-term scales for both levels of healthcare resources. Meanwhile, the influencing factors had different impacts on the different levels of healthcare resources. In general, long-term effects were greater for ULHC and short-term effects were greater for LLHC. The spillover effects of ULHC were more significant than those of LLHC. More specifically, industrial structure, traffic accessibility, government expenditure and family healthcare expenditure were the main determinants of ULHC, while industrial structure, urbanisation, topography, traffic accessibility, government expenditure and family healthcare expenditure were the main determinants of LLHC. These findings have important implications for policymakers seeking to optimize the availability of the two levels of healthcare resources