From "Agglomeration" To "Balanced"——The Spatial Structure And Evolution Of Chinese Aviation Network And Urban System

Along with the improvement of aviation network in 21st century of China, the spatial structure and connected function of urban and region has began to develop from motionless and closed hierarchical distribution to the network structure of closed and open. The research of airline distribution and urban system focus on two aspects: One apply the air throughput data and spatial interaction model as basic, to explore the spatial effect of aviation hub and urban economic development; the other use the topology structure of aviation network, explore the spatial features and network-mechanism under the evolution of "space of flows". However, the research which based on "hub and spoke" structure over-emphasis the features of hierarchical urban system while ignoring the complexity of spatial network, and the research of complex network overlook the impact of geographic features to some extent. Therefore, how these two perspectives and methods to integrate, as well as analyze the spatial correlation and interaction mechanism is an important issue of current research.Adopting the technology of complex network and GIS software in the description of spatial pattern of aviation network and urban system, this study is based on a developing perspective from "space of place" to "space of flows", and employs correlation methods and spatial regression models to re-examine the interactive evolution between air transportation links and urban system spatial structure of China in three aspects of urban economy, function and scale. The main point can be draw as follows:(1) According to the national and major flights data, using the method of complex network and GIS spatial analysis to describe the complexity characteristics of aviation network, the results show the spatial evolution totally appear the features which from "agglomeration" to "balanced", from hierarchical structure of "hub and spoke" to network structure of both "hub and spoke" and "point to point", as well as the long-tailed distributions of statistical characteristic; the feature distribution of aviation hub come into being a network structure of "core-periphery" date from a hierarchical structure of "periphery-core", and the statistical characteristic presents a evolution from "long-tailed with agglomeration structure" to "long-tailed with dispersed structure"; and the aviation network structure show a obvious "small world" cluster effect.(2) Using correlation analysis and spatial analysis, this part of research explore the correlated evolution of spatial features of airline links and urban system in economic pattern, external function and population size, the finding presents evolution features of air transportation links and urban system diffuse from "monocentric" hierarchical structure to "polycentric" network structure, the strength of airline links and the features of hub promote the evolution of economic pattern in urban system to some extent; the evolution features of external function are more similar as the density distribution of aviation network, they main perform an agglomeration structure of aviation hubs and the networking development of inter-region which enclosed by nodal centers; the scale structure of urban system has obvious dispersed distribution, but the clustering center point still distributed to traditional aviation hubs and major cities.(3) Structuring the spatial regression models and quantitative analyzing the interaction mechanism, this part of research find that the strength of network connection is the main core to drive an agglomeration structure of "periphery-core" in urban economic pattern, and the hub status is a major factor to promote an balanced development of "core-periphery"; population size play a leading part to accelerate an agglomeration structure of "periphery-core", while the economic development, transportation progress and population size promote a common development of the dispersed evolution of aviation network, and affect balanced and networked pattern of "core-periphery".Finally, by means of concluding and summarizing, this paper think balanced spatial structure of both "hub and spoke" and "point to point" is a major trend of the development of Chinese aviation network in future, in same time, the structure of "point to point" has shorter travel time and lower operation cost. The key points of future development will not only focus on how to explore airline, but also pay closed attention to the optimization of structure.