Research On The Relevance Between Land-based High-Speed Traffic Trunk And The Rank-size Distribution Of City In China

Ever since the modern times, human activities of non-agricultural industries and non-agricultural population have been gathered by the process of industrialization at an unprecedented speed. Cities of various sizes and patterns have emerged, and they have become the most important place for human activities. Nowadays, urbanization serves as the primary standard for modernization. The different size of cities has affected the flow of production factors among them, for example, population, industry, resources, information, etc. Furthermore, it also has a profound impact on the city size system within the region. With the development of land-based high-speed traffic trunk, the spatial and temporal gap between cities have shrunk rapidly, and the change of the size of cities of different tiers in the city system has accelerated. Therefore, the features of these changes and their influence on the city system and the social development of the whole region have become a research subject.This paper investigates the relevance between the change of land-based high-speed traffic trunk and city size distribution in a decade, by analyzing the urban population size and urban construction land size. Assume that the social economy is developing at normal speed, and there are no other factors affecting the size distribution of cities. We further classify the high-speed traffic trunk into expressway and high-speed railway to study their roles respectively. In addition, the impact of high-speed railway on city size distribution is discussed from high-speed railway lines on one side and high-speed railway stations on the other.City size distribution in this paper is characterized by the urban population size and urban construction land size. Size distribution of 2,293 Chinese cities from 2000 to 2010 is learned, and conclusions are listed as follows:(1)An overall trend of dispersion can be found in the scale of Chinese city systems with gradually decreasing social polarization level;(2)The degree of social polarization for city systems along expressway is below the average level of the country, and is more evenly distributed than city systems that are not along expressway;(3)City systems along high-speed railway are more socially polarized than average level of the country, and those with high-speed railway stations are even more polarized compared with those who are along railway lines.Preliminary thoughts are given in this paper following the conclusions:(1)The construction of land-based high-speed traffic trunk in China is prior to the mass migration of population. Therefore, it provides condition for population movement;(2)The difference in relevances for expressway and high-speed railway with city size distribution is probably due to different development stages they are currently on, and the type of transportation service they provide is another contributing factor. Although passengers can choose both expressway and high-speed railway for travelling, freight transportation can only be achieved by expressway.