The relationship between built environment and travel behavior has long been studied in geography, transportation and city planning. There has been a large body of such researches in western countries from macro and micro perspectives, using different methods such as simulation, description and modeling. Relatively, in China most such researches have centered on trip-based analysis, no matter from aggregation level or individual level, paying little attention to tour-based analysis. In addition, the travel decision-making process of residents has rarely been considered either. This paper attempts to construct the concept model of tour-based spatio-temporal decision-making of travel behavior and explore its residential differentiation on workdays in Beijing city, by using nested logit model with the data of travel diary obtained in 2007. Moreover, it attempts to discuss the relationship between activity and mobility.The results first of all show that residential neighborhood has an effect on the tour type decision-making, but the effect varies with the change of travel purpose. For example, if it is a work tour, its residential differentiation will be significant; but if it is a non-work tour, it will be indistinct. This may be closely related with Chinese unique suburbanization. Secondly, the start time decision-making is mainly affected by the activity type, which implies that there is a strong tie between activity and mobility. But, anyhow, the residential differentiation of start time decision-making is not significant. Thirdly, the travel distance and mode choice is distinct in different neighborhoods, that is to say the residential differentiation of spatial decision-making is significant. On the whole, the travel distance of Danwei residents is comparatively short, and the mode choice is mainly non-motor vehicle. In contrast, the travel distance of residents in commercial housing community and policy-oriented housing community is much longer, and the mode choice is mainly motor vehicle, with car in the former and public transport in the latter. Therefore, the travel behavior of Danwei residents is to some extent low carbon while the travel of policy-oriented housing community residents is long and dependent on public transport. We should pay more attention to these unique neighborhoods in China.
Alleviatory housing is one kind of houses provided by the government for low-income families. It has become one of the important parts in the social security system of China. By doing a case study in the alleviatory housing neighborhoods named Tangxia and Tongde developed during the 1990s in Guangzhou, the jobs-housing relocation and spatial mismatch are tested. The types of residents in both of the neighborhoods have changed a lot from 1996 to 2007. A large number of sub-rent and re-sold houses came up due to the changing of location, relatively low price and inefficient management about immigration and emigration of this indemnificatory housing community. Accordingly, the main structure of housing consists of alleviatory housing, commercial housing, re-rent (sub-rent) housing and Danwei housing. The residents in alleviatory housing and commercial housing meet with great changes of jobs-housing relocation and jobs-housing mismatch with different mechanism factors. As to alleviatory housing residents, the jobs-housing distance became longer after they moved into the houses allocated by the government. The passive jobs-housing mismatch is mainly driven by policies and the barriers from the residents themselves. In the latter case, commercial housing residents who have an average income or above are attracted by the low price of houses due to the political welfare, and they can afford to take taxi or private cars to meet with the long distance commuting. The jobs-housing mismatch is mainly driven by market and the initiate choice of the residents. Different from the residents in both alleviatory housing and commercial housing, residents in re-rent (sub-rent) housing and Danwei housing do not meet with jobs-housing mismatch problems. The former is the residents who work near the neighborhoods and are mostly attracted by the low price of houses, and the latter is the Danwei employees who get houses from their Danweis. Both residents in re-rent (sub-rent) housing and the Danweis on behalf of their employees would take account into the short distance when they select the jobs-housing places. The sub-renting and re-selling of alleviatory housing have carried some inequity and the spatial mismatch for residents in both alleviatory housing and commercial housing has generated some adverse impact on their quality of lives. It is necessary to conduct more researches on the optimization of the alleviatory housing policies and the implementations, as well as the optimization of urban structure.
In today's globalizing age, cities and regions have experienced intensive restructuring in the world, giving rise to deterritorialization and reterritorialization. From the perspective of reterritorialization, this study investigates administrative boundary re-organization in Nanjing metropolitan region, using the case of Jiangning's abolishing county and designating district.According to the theory of territorial restructuring, this study focuses on two territorial organizations-city and state, investigating the process of administrative boundary re-organization, impacts of reterritorialization on urban development and power struggle in administrative boundary adjustment in Nanjing and Jiangning. We argue that territory restructuring is a gradual process in Nanjing metropolitan region, involving abolishing county and designating district and annexation of towns and townships into street offices. Through these administrative boundary adjustments, Jiangning is transforming from a county economy to a city economy. Its economy grows dramatically and the built-up area is extending rapidly after the administrative boundary adjustment. This is due to the independent economic and political status of Jiangning after reterritorialization to a large degree. However, with the restructuring of city space, there is little change in another territorial organization-state. Jiangning district still possesses the former county's administrative system and power. In the new city space, the new administrative system (two-layer governments-city and district) and the old administrative system (three-layer governments-city-county-town/township) co-exist. Therefore, Jiangning's reterritorialization is an incomplete process of reterritorialization due to the lack of state restructuring. Such incomplete reterritorialization causes intensive interest conflicts between city government and district government, especially in urban planning, public transportation and land use, etc. The findings of this study will shed light on other metropolitan administrative boundary re-organizations, and have important policy implementations for improving metropolitan governance.
Agriculture information flows will produce interactive learning effect, and the existence of interactive learning effect plays very important roles in the spread of agricultural technology. Based on the surveys in Mengzhai Village, Henan Province, we collect the data concerning the social and economic conditions on garlic production of neighbors, relatives and nearby-plot farmers, examine interactive learning effect, and analyze the interaction consequences in different types of groups. Results show that: (1) endogenous interaction effects exist only in the kinship group; (2) contextual interaction effect exists in nearby-plot groups and neighborhood group, but interactive learning effects have remarkable differences between the groups; (3) correlated effect exists in all the groups. Compared with the kinship group, the other groups have more correlated effect. Correlated effect is much weaker than endogenous interaction effect in the kinship group, and it is also smaller than contextual interaction effect in nearby-plot group and neighborhood group; (4) direction can be identified in farmers' interactive learning. This suggests that a few farmers learn new methods by communicating with external actors or accumulating the new knowledge by planting the garlic, and their interaction with other farmers might result in knowledge externalities. The size of externalities depends on the degree of intimacy between farmers. The above conclusions have some important policy implications for the diffusion of new technology in Mengzhai Village. For example, in the extension of new technology, we can select a few farmers with stronger absorptive ability in different kinship groups, encourage them to adopt new technology, and thus affect other farmers to accept new technology by the interactive effect. These results revise the findings of foreign scholars. This academic research has important meanings for policy-making.
The rural households have been increasingly taking part in diverse production activities apart from farming in poor mountain areas, which has a great impact on their land-use activities. Taking Yunyang County of Chongqing as a case study, we employed a Participatory Rural Appraisal method to investigate randomly selected 568 households and analyzed the spatial distribution of their rural housing land by using a landscape pattern analysis. The results show that the concurrent business level of rural households was high in Yunyang County. First, according to the ratio of off-farm income to the total income and the proportion of off-farm workforce inputs, we classified rural households into five groups: full-farm, farm-dominated, half-farm, non-farm-dominated and non-farm households. We find that the lower proportion of the elderly or women the households have and the higher education they get, the higher concurrent business level they will be. However, households with multiple divisions of work and a big family size tend to be at the middle stage of concurrent business. Of full-farm and farm-dominated households, the housing land area per family is relatively high, about 180 m2, which indicates extensive landuse utilization. Compared with the farm-dominated households, full-farm households themselves used a large proportion of land for rearing livestock and storing groceries except for housing. The residential land of half-farm households increases by approximately 190 m2 per family, indicating a relatively intensive and less diverse residential land use. For half-farm households, they reduce the land of storing and increase the land of living to enlarge their housing land. As for non-farm-dominated and non-farm households who almost drop all their farming activities, the residential land area per family tends to be lessened, about 160 to 130 m2, which means a more intensive but a less diverse land use pattern. The causes are that the land used for agricultural production decreases, and the decreased land of producing is less than the expanded land of living. As a consequence, the study suggests that the adjustment or arrangement of housing land should be fit to the concurrent business needs of households.
