Research On Evaluation And Application Of Urban Niche

Cities are the main spatial carriers of economical activities, and the cities and regions have become the key factor of development. Recently, developed countries are paying more attention to urban development policy compared with regions. The development of globalization and informationization breaks the limitation of capital, technology, talents and so on, and the city relates to more large-scale regions and cities not limited to the hinterland, so the competition of different cities becomes more and more severity.Urbanization is the only way for China's transformation. China is experiencing the largest scale urbanization of the world, and the urbanization ratio of China has increased from 17.9% in 1978 to 43.9% in 2006. Though China's urban development has got much achievements, there are also many common problems need to be improved, such as overexploitation of resources, defect of characteristic of urban development, urban scale not accord with the resources condition etc. Weather the problems within cities or among cities are all required new methods to guide urban development.As the ecosystem, the city has the course of formation, development, prosperity and decline, succession, so the city is a complex ecosystem. The position and role of the city in the regional system can be regarded as the city's niche, so we can open a new perspective of urban research. The mainstream of economics pays attention to time process,which regards regions as homogeneous area, and stresses the factors' coordination and feedback. The niche theory is the same as spcitial economics, and pays much attention to regional spatial charactoristics and difference. Urban niche exists objectively based on the interaction between city and its environment, and it describes the state of coexisting equilibrium.The macroeconomic theory of Keynes holds that social production is determined by demand, and the supply will not have effective constraint to demand usually. While it is a short-term equilibrium analysis, and the economic development is affected mainly by the constraint of resources supply if we consider a sustained development society. Hutchinson used abstract geometry to comprehend niche as N-dimensional hyper volume that is a special resource space which support organism survival. Recently, many ecologists maked niche equal to the resource utilization spectra. Concerning urban development from sustainable development angle, it must be found a group of resources to support urban development. The reason of city competition is the scarcity of resources, so urban development must strengthen the contention and utilization of resources. With the development of science & technology and the improvement of human cognitive ability, the connotation of resource continuously extended. Modern outlook on resource thinks that resource includes not only the nature resource but also the wealth and asset created by mankind. The heterogeneity of urban resources determines the city's development direction and models.Urban complex ecosystem has the feature of multiple dimensional. The city must evaluate self-development accurately to understand the position and environment of the regional system, and to select reasonable development strategy accord with itself. Introducing niche concept into urban study of the society of human beings we can evaluate the resource condition and development environment of cities accurately, and to find new survival status and the law of development. We can find the urban development space through understanding the urban survival and development status, so as to get the development thought of the same kind cities and guide city's long-term development.The dissertation mainly discusses the ecological rules of cities, evaluates the urban niche, analyzes the urban development strategy, and to adjust the dynamic relationship of urban niche and its structure and elements to realize optimum development. The following are the main research contents:First, the dissertation summarizes the niche-related research, then according to the main thought of niche theory and its applications in several fields, and considers the current situation and characteristics of china's cities creates the urban niche research framework. The framework includes the basic proposition and hypothesis of urban niche research, the resources view of urban development, the connotation and main characteristics of urban niche, and expounds the brief urban niche theory.Second, under the urban niche research framework the dissertation establishes urban niche evaluation index by using urban development evaluation and niche evaluation index constructed by united nations, world bank and other classical literatures. The dissertation uses the method of comprehensive evaluation to evaluate the 34 cities in Northeast integrally; uses clustering techniques to classify the urban types; uses the methods of regression and correlation to analyze the dynamic relationship between urban niche and its elements and the difference of resource in different cities, and uses the gravity model to measure the competition intensity of urban resources.Finally, the promotion strategy of urban niche has been proposed. Urban development should take convolution as the goal, niche separation as the approach, and niche expansion as the guarantee. The urban development strategy based on niche is mainly includes system equilibration strategy and competition development strategy. At last the dissertation analyzes and evaluates the urban development situation and ecological security in Northeast, and the corresponding countermeasures of regional development and urban development are put forward.