Spatial Evolution Of Urban Agglomeration Motivation

Since the50th last century, the world’s urbanization process is accelerated. Urban spacecontinues to expand to the periphery, emerged，mutually influenced with neighboring cities，thusformed the large scale urban agglomeration. There are six recognized urban agglomerations in theworld, which have a huge impaction in this region, even all around the world, and participate inthe globalization of competition and the division of labor as a whole. China is in a rapid period ofindustrialization and urbanization, so urban agglomeration emerges endlessly. Due to the uneveneconomic development of various regions of China, various urban agglomerations exist atdifferent levels and at different stages of development. Some entered into maturity, such as theYangtze River Delta city group, the urban agglomeration of the Pearl River Delta andBeijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration; some entered into a rapid growth, such asChengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration, the Liaodong Peninsula City, Shandong Peninsula,some entered into the early city groups such as the urban Agglomeration of Fuzhou-Xiamen citygroup, the Central Plains city group, as well as the embryonic stage of urban agglomeration suchas Yinchuan Plain urban agglomeration; HBE urban agglomeration; Jiujiayu urban agglomeration.These urban agglomerations play an important role in promoting regional economic developmentin China and to participate in the world competition.The urban agglomerations space，formed by interconnection and between cities, mutualinfluence,is a kind of economic space which carries city industries and population. The differentlevel of urban agglomeration has different characteristics. From a macro point of view, differentcities group space exhibit different fractal characteristics, which can be used fractal dimension tocharacterize the degree of development of the urban agglomeration. From the microscopic point ofview, the city group space is formed within the hierarchy of different towns. The paper selected10urban agglomerations at different developmental stages in China for the study, analysis of theirspatial characteristics.In essence, the development of the urban agglomeration is a spatial ordering process ofevolution. The evolution of the urban agglomeration is divided into the following stages: the core-radiation stage, the core-the circle stage, the stage of the dual-core, multi-core stage. Thepromotion of the evolution of China’s urban agglomerations space are the natural growth force, theforce of government regulation and economical driving force of the three work together. Naturalcondition is a basic condition of the urban agglomeration, which determines the speed, mode andthe status of the spatial evolution of urban agglomeration. Economic driving force can bediscussed from the following three aspects. Firstly, the industry gathering, the sophistication of theindustrial structure is a core driving force of the evolution of urban agglomeration space. When a city group space can not accommodate existing industrial chain or industrial sophistication, itneeds to change the layout of existing industries that leads the evolution urban agglomerationspace. Secondly, change of the traffic pattern accounting for the flow of production factorspromotes the evolution of the urban agglomeration space. The traffic pattern changes will helpstrengthen the link between the cities and improve commuter rate, promote the spread of theindustry and re-layout. Thirdly, the highly export-oriented city group can take advantage offoreign investment and foreign trade, driving the evolution of the city group space. Administrativedriving force can promote the evolution of urban agglomerations space by the governmentmacro-control, policies, planning..In three decades of reform and opening up, the development of urban agglomeration inChina entered a new era, formatting city group along the coast, river and the traffic arteries. But,compared with the developed areas, our urban agglomeration development experience is shallow,and the city group space is not yet completely developed. There is a lot of problems existing, suchas duplication of industrial structure, inadequate urban hierarchy and administrative barriers. Thepaper pointed out these problems and how to optimize the space of urban agglomeration in Chinaat the same time.