The Research Of Chinese Urban Network Based On High-end Consumer Culture

About the relationship between cities, previous studies only focused on the cities’ hierarchical relationships based on Central Place Theory. With the advance of global integration process, the flowing of people, things, technology and information between cities, the increase in cross-border trade and investment, a closer relationship between cities and an interconnected network of cities are gradually formed. In the study of urban network, the main research of The World City Network is the economic link between cities, such as the relationship between producer services. Secondly, the link of cities in the dimension of transport infrastructure, such as road network, aviation network, communication network and so on. The study of urban network in the perspective of consumer culture is insufficient. As a breakthrough point, this thesis analyses Chinese urban network from the perspective of consumer culture, proposes the layout and space structure of Chinese urban network in the high-end consumer culture perspective, and explores contacts and relations of the cities in Chinese urban system based on the high-end consumer culture. The study presents the effects of different categories of luxury brands to the integrated urban network formed by all brands, as well as the types of network formed by different categories of luxury brands.Firstly, based on the city layout data of four different categories of luxury brands, this article analyzes the distribution data of 31 luxury brands among the Top 100 world luxury brands in 2014 within 45 Chinese main cities and the network development of these cities by applying the Globalization and World Cities Study Group’s(Ga WC) corporation organized law. Eventually, we find out the network structure formed by 31 different luxury brands is a core-periphery structure as well as the network structure formed by four different categories of luxury brands. Besides Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai are in the core of the high-end consumer culture city network which formed by these 31 luxury brands.In the perspective of luxury brands, top-ranking cities in city network connection degree and degree centrality are mainly located in Jing-Jin-Ji, the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, the Northeast China and so on. There are more high-grade cities in these areas. Within the high-end consumer culture area, there exists some unbalance between cities. For example, the same city is at different levels in the city networks which formed by different categories of luxury brands. The city network analysis shows that Chinese city network structure is a graded and embedded structure. The most influential brands on integrated urban network formed by all brands are fashion luxury brands.On the basis of theoretical research and empirical analysis results, this paper proposes to optimize the spatial distribution pattern of Chinese urban system and to strengthen the links of urban network under high-end consumer cultural perspective is based on strengthening the cities’ competitive strength. Secondly, in the field of high-end consumer culture, the cities exist certain imbalance, and based on the consumption ecology of luxury brands in China and strategic significance of the luxury brand store location to the consumer market, this paper proposes implications to urban construction and to build a more mature consumer space system and optimize urban layout of luxury brands.