Urbanization Of Three Major Ecological Regions In Gansu Province

The level of urbanization reflects the overall developing level, developing stage and social civilization for a country or region. The ecological environment in Gansu Province is fragile and sensitive, and its economy ranking is low nationally. Thus, guidance is needed during the process of urbanization to avoid the vicious cycle of ecology-environment deterioration caused by the ecological environment deterioration. Based on the research of the interactions between urbanization and ecological environment at home and abroad, three distinctive ecological areas in Gansu Province was selected:Maqu County on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Linze County in the Inland arid area of Northwest China, and Huan County on Loess Plateau. Data were collected by doing on site surveys and questionnaires filled in by farmers in these areas. The objective of this thesis was to figure out the difference of the urbanization development in these three areas and to estimate the urbanization level of the contemporary unbanization. The research indicates:1. These three counties are currently at the early stage of urbanization. The rate of population urbanization is different-Huan count was the highest level (21.67%) while Linze was the lowest (18.71%).2. The development of urbanization in these three counties lagged behind each local economic and social development. The unbalanced index of urbanization development in these three counties indicated that Maqu County (-0.079) was more balanced comparing to Huan county (-0.479).3. The establishment of calculating model of the new type of comprehensive level of urbanization includes four parts:The modeling of contemporary urbanization included eighteen indexes regarding to population development, economic development, infrastructure construction and social development. The results suggested that Linze County (0.2606) was better developed comparing to Maqu County (0.0801).4. The rate of surveyed farmers who hold positive and active attitude towards participating in urbanization was 68.67%. Factors which influence the farmers’ willingness to participate were different among these three counties, for example, the major concern of farmers in Maqu County were pasture area, living area, understanding of urbanization, attitude towards the land circulation and infrastructure etc.; farmers in Linze county mainly focused on household income, land area, and understanding of the urbanization level; farmers in Huan county paied more attention to understanding of urbanization level and attitude towards the household registration reform.There was a typical human-natural coupling system formed between rural and urban areas vs. the ecology. And these three elements can influence each other. The different levels of urbanization existed in these areas were due to the different types of ecology and environment of Gansu province. These differences would affect the economic development and industrial structure, and therefore lead to different urbanization levels. The level of agricultural development was determined by the difference in ecological environment and therefore lead to the different levels of urbanization when no distinctive natural resource existed.