Research On Spatial Disparity Of County Urban-rural Integration And Influential Factors In Shaanxi Province

Urban and rural areas are the two basic units that compose region. Urban-rural relation-ship isn’t only the most basic relationship, but also the most essential relationship between regions. Spatial disparity of urban-rural integration is the geographic projection of regional socio-economic activities, and an important indicator of regional development state, which reflects spatial attributes and mutual relationship of regional socio-economic activities. Research on spatial disparity of county urban-rural integration in Shaanxi province is conduc-tive to understanding the spatial disparity characteristics and its influential factors, formul-ating the policies for coordinated regional development, and achieving leapfrog development. Therefore, the theories and methods of human-economic geography were used to study107counties of Shaanxi province. A systematic study on spatial disparity of county urban-rural integration in Shaanxi province has been carried out quantitatively and qualitatively. The conclusions are as follows:(1) Domestic and international research progress has been reviewed and summarized systematically. The results show that theory, concept, connotation, development goals, dynamic mechanism and evaluation on the level of urban-rural integration development have been researched systematically on theoretical analysis and practical research, which have generated a lot of achievements. However, there is a lack of systematic and quantitative research on theoretical analysis and practical research of spatial disparity of urban-rural integration, so in-depth study is urgently required.(2) Theoretical basis and quantitative evaluation methods have been reviewed and summarized systematically. The results show that the level of urban-rural integration develop-ment has been measured by domestic scholars from the perspective of urban-rural spatial integration, socio-cultural integration, eco-nvironment integraion and economic integration based on three kinds of scales, which has generated a lot of achievements. However, from the overall regional perspective, urban-rural integration is a development process of promoting rational flow of various production elements and highly networked collaboration between urban and rural areas. Urban-rural correlated development and urban-rural coordinated development should be researched on this process, in which urban-rural correlated develop-ment is the foundation and urban-rural coordinated development is the goal. Therefore, the evaluation index system has been built including urban-rural correlation which consists of spatial organization correlation, economic development correlation, socio-cultural correlation and eco-environment correlation, and urban-rural coordination which consists of economic development coordination, socio-cultural coordination and eco-environment coordination.(3) Taking107counties of Shaanxi province as study case, the ESDA, Geography Statistics, Mathematical Statistics and other methods combined with means of quantitative and qualitative analysis have been used to study the pattern and the process of spatial disparity of county urban-rural integration in Shaanxi province from1978to2010. The results show that the spatial disparity pattern of county urban-rural integration in Shaanxi province is highly associated with the socio-economic development of county, and is consistent with the regional socio-economic development trend. Specifically, when the region with higher level of socio-economic development is a region with higher level of urban-rural integration, and is also hotspot areas in spatial distribution, but cold areas of growth. The spatial disparity process generally shows an evolutionary trend of "low level equilibrium, low level non-balanced and high level equilibrium" from1978to2010, in which it is the most significant during1978to2000.(4) Principal Component Analysis, Multiple Linear Regression model and Coefficient of Variation have been used to analysis the influential factors of spatial disparity of county urban-rural integration in Shaanxi province from1978to2010. The results show that spatial organization, economic structure, socio-cultural and eco-environment are main factors influencing spatial disparity of county urban-rural integration. However, their influential extents are different, which are0.242,0.275,0.214and0.224in1978;0.440,0.136,0.209and0.209in2000;0.542,0.231,0.264and0.124in2010respectively.(5) According to the types of urban-rural integrated development including overall lagging development region, primary coordinated development region, medium-coordinated develop-ment region and highly coordinated development region, specific optimizing countermeasures of county urban-rural integration in Shaanxi province have been proposed.