High-Speed Rail Development And The Spatial Pattern Evolution Of Producer Services

With the socio-economic morphology changes from "industrial economy" to "knowledge economy", service industry is already a pillar industry in many mega cities. As a kind of middle input industry, producer services play a significant role in city development and urban spatial reconstruction. The improvement of transport infrastructure leads to re-construction of China’s urban and industrial spatial structure, through promoting factor flows, cutting the cost of transportation, extending market, and changing geographical conditions. The national High-Speed Rail Grid (4+4) Passenger Dedicated Lines(PDL) Railway being built up and running will create a comprehensive impact on the spatial pattern of producer services.Firstly, using ESDA method to analyze the spatial autocorrelation of producer services, we find that Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Bohai Bay area and some other cities along HSR have significant LISA and develop to hot zones. Therefore, we deem these areas as centers of the spatial pattern preliminarily. Then we deem Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen as core urban centers, Guangzhou as sub-core urban center in the spatial pattern of producer services, according to the results of polycentric regional density functions. By comparing the results of 2003 and 2011, we find that the core urban centers have a trend of concentrating. The spatial pattern of producer services turns from leading by few core urban centers to Multi-core structure.Secondly, we consider that HSR network generates tunnel effect and syphonage effect, and makes spatial pattern of producer services coupling with it, by kernel density estimation. Finally, a dynamic varying parameter model is built aiming to identify the effect of accessibility to the spatial pattern, which indicates that the concentration and the decentralization of producer services within urban centers are influenced significantly by accessibility of HSR network. Furthermore, by magnetizing senior nodes of HSR network, HSR made them cores of the spatial pattern, attracting production factors gathering from other cities, which widening the gap between cities along HSR. Based on that and review of results by other researchers, we make the prediction on the evolution of producer services’spatial pattern. We believe that new nodes of HSR network will be new centers earlier than other cities, and mainly present concentration pattern, coexisting with the decentralization of old core urban centers. In the long run, the spatial pattern will turn to multi-center structure and realize regional integration.Thus, the government should take appropriate measures for the HSR construction plan, to obtain advantages and avoid disadvantages, for HSR creates a comprehensive effect to spatial reconstruction. From the need of optimizing spatial pattern, the government may also consider to make necessary adjustments to HSR network construction plan, which may help to reconstruct the spatial pattern of producer services.