The Nexus between Urbanization and Traffic Accessibility in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River Urban Agglomerations, China

Abstract

China has entered the stage where urban agglomerations underpin and spearhead the county’s urbanization. Urban agglomerations in China have become economic growth poles, and the constantly improving transport networks in these agglomerations bring about opportunities for redistributing labor forces and promoting regional economic development, trade, and social progress for all. This is the foundation and fuel for urban development. However, lack of knowledge of the spatial features of, and the interrelationship between, regional urbanization and traffic accessibility constrains effective urban planning and decision-making. To fill this gap, this study attempted to evaluate the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of urbanization levels and traffic accessibility in 1995, 2005, and 2015 in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River Urban Agglomerations (MRYRUA), China. The spatial interaction, spatial dependence effect, and spatial spillover effect between urbanization and traffic accessibility were tested by employing the bivariate spatial autocorrelation model and spatial regression models. The results showed that the urbanization level and traffic accessibility in the MRYRUA shot up over time and manifested similar spatial distribution characteristics. The global bivariate spatial autocorrelation coefficients were positive and significant during the period studied, and the main relationship types were the high urbanization and high traffic accessibility types and low urbanization and low traffic accessibility types. The spatial regression results showed that there was a significant positive association between urbanization and traffic accessibility, but with a significant scale effect. Urbanization is not only affected by the traffic accessibility of the individual grid unit but also by those in the adjacent or further grid units. The findings in this study provide important implications for urbanization development and transportation planning. The spatial dependence effect and spatial spillover effect between urbanization and traffic accessibility should be considered in future urban planning and transportation planning. The rational allocation of resources and inter-regional joint management can be an effective path toward regional sustainability.

Does the Establishment of National New Areas Improve Urban Ecological Efficiency? Empirical Evidence Based on Staggered DID Model

“…Generally, the establishment of national new areas is conducive to improve regional economic growth [ 62 ]. Some recent studies have empirically tested national new areas in a spatial agglomeration of economic activities, accelerating the urbanization and industrialization process in China [ 63 ]. Establishing the national new area is found to have increased the spatial inequality of the municipality where it is located, and the level of the regional economy, degree of openness, and complexity of administration has identified to be affected [ 13 ].…”

“…Therefore, firstly, PSM method is used, and control variables in the benchmark model are adopted to predict the probability of establishing the national new areas in each city through using Logit model. Secondly, the nearest neighbor matching method is used for sampling [ 63 ] what is put back, and then treatment and control groups are matched one-to-one. Finally, the mean difference between rematched treatment and control groups is examined, and the “pure effect” of policy implementation is assessed using the staggered DID method.…”

Research on the network connection mode of logistics economy in Guangdong province based on social network analysis

“…The impact of logistics industry agglomeration on regional economy (van den Heuvel et al, 2013;Mori and Nishikimi, 2002;Chhetri et al, 2014;Rivera et al, 2014Rivera et al, , 2016Kayikci, 2010;Sheffi, 2012), logistics warehouse location and path optimization (Cheng et al, 2021;Liu and Ying, 2020;Shahparvari et al, 2020;Ferhat Candas and Kutanoglu, 2020;Alptekin et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2021;Chen et al, 2021), and the research subject gradually changes from macro to individual. In addition to qualitative research, scholars also conduct research through various quantitative methods, mainly including vector autocorrelation and Granger causality test (Taniguchi and Van Der, 2000;Basatab, 2001;Hong -Oanh and Jose, 2010), DECD model (Skjott -Larsen et al, 2003;Camuthers et al, 2004a), time series (Mohammad, 2013;Sultan and Emrah, 2014), production function (Coto-Mill an et al, 2014) and spatial econometric model (Kumar et al, 2017;Peter and Catherine, 2018;Bai et al, 2022;He et al, 2019). The early research on logistics mainly focused on the relationship between logistics and economy.…”

“…Bai, Dongling made a spatial analysis of China's logistics ecological efficiency and its influencing factors based on super SBM undesirable and spatial Dobbin model (Bai et al, 2022). Meiling he used panel data to study the temporal and spatial evolution of logistics enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta and found that logistics enterprises gradually transferred from the urban center to the suburbs (He et al, 2019).…”

Investigating interaction pattern between urban-rural integration and transport network: A dynamic evolution model

“…By introducing the spatial econometric regression model, the results showed that the spatial and temporal patter of urbanization was affected by internal source, administrative level and investment level. Similarly, Ge et al (2021) [ 5 ] evaluated the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of urbanization levels and traffic accessibility with bivariate spatial autocorrelation model and spatial regression models. It was found that there existed a positive relation between urbanization level and traffic accessibility, but with a significant scale effect.…”