A Study On The Structure Issues Of Wuhan Urban Agglomerations

In the Planning of China Urban System (2005-2020) (Compendium),the construction of"Wuhan urban agglomerations"has been concluded as one of the important aspects in the Central China urban system construction . Wuhan urban agglomerations, which belongs to mesoscopic scale urban agglomeration, is not only the vital terrain in the Hubei Economic Zone, but also one of the most important urban agglomerations construction spots in Central China. Therefore, the Study on the structure issues of Wuhan Urban Agglomerations will greatly promote the urbanization process of the cities and fundamentally improve the sustainable development of economy in Wuhan urban agglomeration district and Hubei Province.Firstly, the paper defined the regional range of Wuhan urban agglomeration and its space units, and then discussed its development status ,including the situation of the main cities ,the circumstance and process of evolution as well as the structure characteristics as a whole.Secondly, the paper detailedly analyzed the characteristics of Wuhan urban agglomeration's hierarchical size,functional and spatial structure. In the first part, the paper focused on the hierarchical size structure. The author analyzed the primacy ratio index number and the size rank of the urban agglomerations. Based on the introduction of the fractal theory, the paper appies this theory to analyze quantitatively the hierarchical size structure of the urban agglomeration. The research found that the total size of Wuhan urban agglomeration is large, while the distribution of hierarchical size is dispersive and the size hierarchical is incontinuous, the urban agglomeration indicates the typical"primate city dominated"characteristics.In the second part, the paper studied the functional structure of the urban agglomeration. The author analyzed the functional structure quantitatively by Weber Function Index Numbers and the Specialization Index Numbers,and give out that the division of the urban function is not obvious and the level of urban dominant function is on the low side . The third part simply elaborated the evolution process of the spatial structure of Wuhan urban agglomeration, discussed the spatial distribution characteristics of the cities in the urban agglomeration, and analyzed the spatial structure of the urban agglomeration quantitatively by the fractal theory. The research deduced that the distribution of the cities is asymmetrical, traffic-axes-oriented and central-city-oriented, and the network structure has not emerged.Finally ,the paper analyzed the causes of formation for the structure of Wuhan Urban Agglomerations. The factors that affect the structure of urban agglomerations are complex and diverse. The author considers the following factors all affected the structure of Wuhan Urban Agglomerations, which are the asymmetrical distribution of the nature source; the wide gap between the industry of the central city and the peripheral cities; the low-level industry structure, relations of production and the production, the overlap of the industry among the cities; the imperfection of the traffic network system; the government policy favoritism for the central city and the monopolization economy of each city.