Studies On The Apex City Of Delta

This dissertation introduces the concept of Apex of Delta in drainage area physiognomy into economic geography, and puts forward that there exits apex in economic delta zones as well. The economic delta apex is a region coming into being around the physical delta apex, which is defined as Economic Apex Region of Delta (EARD) in this dissertation. Economic Apex Region of Delta usually possesses a centre city, which has important effect on regional economy, i.e. Apex City of Delta (ACD). This paper concentrates on the issues of the location characters, the forming mechanism, and the spatial orientation of ACD in the drainage spatial structure by approaches of historical evolutionary analysis and case analysis, the main case is ACD of Yangtze Delta-Nanjing.1. It is illustrated that ACD is a universal phenomena through contrastive case analysis on deltas of great rivers both home and overseas, especially the domestic.2. The origin and development of Nanjing are affected by three predominant factors: transportation, military (landform), and economy. The advantages of these three aspects are derived from its location characteristics as an ACD actually, and this conclusion implies where the dynamic of forming and developing of ACD comes from.3. ACDs show some common characteristics as followed: with long history, being the center of regional politics, economics and culture; being the biggest or important river port city in the drainage basin; being the central city with significance of the whole basin. The unique feature of location and advantage of ACD mainly rest on its transportation hinge position.4. ACD is isomorphic in the space. In addition, ACD is an economic geographical concept and it is not necessarily lies in the physical apex of the delta, i.e. the physical and the economic apex of delta are not superposed.5. The central cities of basin are classified according their location as upriver central city, middleriver central city, apex city of delta (ACD), and the gateway city. Such a spatial orientation highlights the locational and functional characters of ACD and gateway city.6. Regional central city-gateway city is the ideal dual-nuclei structure. Dual-nuclei structure is composed by ACD and the gateway city a new spatial combination.7. The development of domestic delta is driven by endogenetic force. The dual-nuclei structure composed by ACD and the gateway city has been developing along with the evolution of physical environment of delta, which could be divided into five phases. During this process, the gateway of the delta changed from the apex region to the coastal region, and the ACD declined gradually while compared with the gateway city. While in the dual-nuclei structure driven by ectogenic force, the ACD did not experience the process of declining and function changing but was impacted by the gateway city originally.