| During the rapid industrialization and urbanization in China, the construction supervision enterprises (CSEs) which can provide professional technological services to construction industry have already been regarded as one of the main parties concerned with the managements related to the quality, schedule and finance controls in building processes. What’s more, the spatial reconstruction during the urban and regional industrial structure transformation are related to the spatial activities of CSEs since they are typical producer service, while the sustainable growth of regional construction industry are also dependent on them. However, a series of theoretical issues about the location evolution of CSEs in China have not been adequately developed at present, such as their location selection regularities, spatial expansion mechanisms and so on. Therefore, this study puts the CSEs and their special producer services into some classical propositions of economic geography, including spatial distribution and location selection of economic activities, so that the locating laws of both group CSEs and individual ones can be interpreted at different spatial scales through both normative and empirical research, as well as quantitative and qualltative methods. It is suggested that the spatial characteristics of producer service activities in Chinese engineering construction field and their complicated relations with urban and regional development can be revealed through this study. Meanwhile, the geographical research perspectives to the Chinese producer services can be enriched and certain progresses are surely gained in Chinese economic geography with the help of this study.Base on the introduction to the concepts of construction supervision and a detailed literature review, the research framework of CSEs’location is established from the viewpoint of economic geography at first. Secondly, the distribution evolution of CSEs among31provinces in China is briefly depicted and the interactions between CSEs’provincial distribution and regional surroundings are carefully studied. Meanwhile, the countermeasures to coordinate the provincial distribution of CSEs are also put forward based on the above outcomes. Thirdly, the theoretical mechanisms and locational factors system which cause the clusters of CSEs in some urban districts are defined and validated with a case city at block scale so that the interactive relationship between the layout of CSEs and urban planning can be identified. Finally, since both the characteristics of spatial activities of individual CSEs and its spatial expansion objectives are interpreted, the locating process modes of individual CSEs are concluded. At the same time, the correlation mechanisms between geographic proximity of locations of individual CSEs and the improvements of their knowledge diffusion are raised and tested by a enterprise case. The main contents and conclusions of this study are as follows:(1) The vertical division of production mode in construction industry and the needs of external supervisions in engineering are the main reasons for which the CSEs are classified as a typical producer service. Thus, the theoretical studies on producer services in economic geography, enterprise geography and some other related disciplines are concluded, and the research framework of CSEs’location which not only ranges from the regional scale to the urban block scale but also contains the spatial activities of both group and individual CSEs is established.(2) The general spatial distribution patterns of the amounts of CSEs are identified based on the careful industry survey and arcgis technology, as well as the employee and the business incomes. After having a well known about the service activities of CSEs, a locational factors system including9possible factors belonged to4aspects that may influence the spatial distribution of CSEs are presented. With31provincial data not only compiled from the annual survey but also gained through independent investigation in year2006and2010, the contribution and variation of each influencing factor to the spatial distribution of both the enterprises’amounts and enterprises’dominance degrees (qualifications index-QI) are detected and compared with the help of multiple linear regression analysis and partial correlation analysis. According to the positive and negative correlations between the spatial developments of CSEs and their provincial surroundings, suggestions to coordinate the regional pattern of CSEs are proposed in this study.The results of CSEs’spatial distributions indicate that:1) The development of CSEs’ amounts in China is unbalanced and their spatial concentration happens clearly in the economically developed provinces in eastern and central China. Meanwhile the traditional metropolises are also proved to be the clusters of enterprises, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Similarly, The distribution of provincial dominance degrees (QI) of CSEs in China is also unbalanced and the eastern provinces give a better performance than the middle and western ones.2) The regression outcomes of the CSEs’amounts show that the gross output value of local construction industry and the amounts of both engineering technical professionals and exploration&design enterprises have significant influences to the formation and variations of spatial pattern in a long-term run, while the influencing effects of Internet and local construction supervision associations become obvious only in recent years.3) It is suggested that the activity of local technology market, the amounts of engineering technical professionals and the organizing level of local construction supervision associations are the most intimate determinants to the dominance degree disparities of the CSEs in terms of the partial correlation coefficients.(3) The location selection of CSEs within cities and its agglomeration orientation and formation mechanism are theoretically discussed and the locational factors system in the CSEs’urban locating are presented through analyzing the production chain of CSEs, as well as consulting the published literature about the urban location of producer services. Furthermore, a case study of the location selection of CSEs in Xi’an is employed to test and verify the theoretical achievement above. On one hand, the increasing and concentrating process of CSEs at block scale in Xi’an from2000to2011is depicted and inspected by ESDA method and Geoda software. On the other hand, the urban planning and municipal engineering data at block scale in Xi’an City are collected so that the effects of locational factors can be empirically validated according to their contributions detected by spatial analysis technique and binomial regression model.The conclusions of theoretical and empirical studies on the CSEs’urban locating include that:1) Spatial agglomeration is the basic characteristic of the location selection of CSEs within cities.2) Immediate contact to key person, localization economy among construction technical service enterprises, and favorable policies are the crucial reasons for which the CSEs attempt to locate together at some special blocks of a city, while the interactions among construction technical service enterprises are the most important one in the locational factors system of CSEs’urban locating.3) The layout guidance of CSEs in urban planning can be given by the effects diversities of different locational factors. In the case study of Xi’an, the location agglomeration pattern of CSEs mainly based on the cooperation and imitation among construction technical service enterprises is obviously different from the pattern guided by the development zone planning.(4) The location expansion and evolution of individual CSEs are systematically discussed in this study. Based on the inherent requirements of the engineering construction activities, the regularities, modes and stage characteristics during the locating processes of individual CSEs can be explained by combining the survival objective of individual CSEs with the discovered fact that they are strong in location occupation but weak in location embeddedness. At the same time, the correlations between geographic proximity of locations of individual CSEs and the improvements of their knowledge diffusion are deeply analyzed on the basis of the developmental objective. When the knowledge diffusion channels of individual CSEs have been deconstructed and reconstituted, their implicit knowledge are then divided into sharing type and exclusive one, while the spatial diffusion characteristics of each type are clearly clarified. As a result, the correlation conclusions can be obtained through analyzing the structures of knowledge diffusion channels and finding out the responding types of implicit knowledge diffusing in them.(5) With resorting to the abundant data from a case enterprise, the theoretical insights of location evolution of individual CSEs can be well validated and interpreted through testing three key propositions. They are as follows:1) The longer an individual enterprise has developed, the more unbalanced its general location pattern is.2) There are special locating modes of individual CSEs which can be summarized as "spreading randomly at first but changing selectively later".3) The fact that geographic proximity of locations of individual CSEs is certainly beneficial for the improvements of the knowledge diffusion only happens when the sharing type of implicit knowledge diffuses in the "one to many" type of knowledge diffusion channels of individual CSEs. |
PDF Full Text Request