The Network Structure Characteristics And Evolution Of Guanzhong Plain Urban Agglomeration

With the rapid development of globalization and informatization,urban networking pattern emerges step by step,following the communication of population,trade and resources in cities,and research on urban network has been critical for urban development.Urban agglomerations play an important role in national and regional economic development.Understanding urban network structure will help us master development law and evolutionary trends of cities in urban agglomerations.Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration,the biggest agglomeration in northwest China and a key point of “The Belt and Road Initiative”developing to west,has unique location advantage and development background and it’s strengthening itself greatly.Focusing on Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration,this paper builds an urban network with multiple elements and takes research on network structure of Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration and analyzes the evolutionary process and characteristics,which can be a scientific basis of spatial layout and development planning of Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration.This paper selects 11 prefecture-level cities of Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration and 4 time nodes: 2011,2014,2017 and 2020,and then makes a research on characteristics and evolutionary trend of network structure of Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration.For starters,the author divided the network structure into economy network,transportation network and information network and made research from different aspects.Second,the author conducted calculation and analysis on strength of association of every network,building preliminary economy,transportation and information networks.Third,the author analyzed main characteristic parameters,such as network density,centrality,condensed subgroups and core edge structure,by social network research method,finding out the development characteristics of networks and cities and their temporal development trends.Finally,the author analyzed influencing factors of network structure characteristics of Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration and specified the major influencing factor of network structure characteristics.Some countermeasures and suggestions are proposed based on that.The results show that: 1.There is a large economic gap among cities and a high difference between location entropy and the extrovert energy of cities in economy network of Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration.Urban industrial structure is unbalanced.The location entropy of Xi’an is the highest in regional economic industries and Xi’an can provide products and services of multiple industries to other cities.2.The radiation from central cities to surrounding cities is limited.The centrality of Xi’an and Xianyang in economy,transportation and information networks is quite higher than that of other cities.Xi’an and Xianyang are the absolute center of networks of Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration.3.Xi’an has been always the core of transportation network with time evolution and other cities within the region are always in the fringes of transportation network.Tongchuan and Qingyang are sluggish to develop transportation while transportation integration is carrying on.4.East-west development axis has been generated in Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration and Xi’an-Baoji axis and Xi’an-Weinan axis carry the development of the agglomeration.5.Cross-province cities have strengthened communication and cooperation,but there is still an influence of administrative boundaries or geographical spaces on communication between cities.6.In networks of Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration,gross regional product,total retail sales of consumer goods,fixed assets investment and scale of Internet broadband access produce the greatest influence which seems to be long-term,while year-end population,fiscal expenditure and per-capita disposable income of urban residents produce a weaker influence.