Study On The Urban System In Modern Suiyuan Area

The historical urban geography is one of the most important fields in humanity and social science. This paper chose Suiyuan area as the study area, on the basis of inter-discipline, method consolidation and relevant researches at home and abroad, after exploiting and utilizing a mass amount of historical documents and materials, made systematically and Regionally a comprehensive study from the perspective of historical geography on the upsurge and development of town, regional spatial structure, functional structure, hierarchical size structure of urban system and the changes of regional traffic network in modern Suiyuan area. The research methods of this paper are historical literature study, GIS and Cartography, comprehensive integrated method combining quantitation and qualititation and other technical means such as ArcGIS, SPSS, Excel etc.The paper includes three parts: the preamble, the text and the conclusion. In the preamble, the title selection basis, relevant study survey, basic historical materials, research contents, research methods, basic propositions and innovation of this article are explained.The text can be divided into five chapters. Chapter one describes how town rose and developed in modern Suiyuan area and summarizes the upsurge and development process of main towns. Taking a panoramic view of the main towns in modern Suiyuan area, we can see that they rose and developed under complicated conditions combining environmental factors, geographical foundation and socio-cultural background. The main social background of emerging a large number of towns in modern Suiyuan area is the political vicissitude and the policy change toward Mongolia from Qing dynasty. Besides, the rural settlement of migrants and agriculture, local governance, region passageway superiority, religious commercial activities with increasing frequency, modern industry and mining become the key factors promoting the upsurge and development of towns. As a result, lots of counties, dynapolises or religious trade centers rose in modern Suiyuan area.Chapter two analyzes the regional spatial structure of urban system in modern Suiyuan area. Viewing its spatial distribution, the urban distribution in modern Suiyuan area appears highly non-balanced with a pattern of less in the west and more in the east, concentrating in the middle-south,having geographical distribution characteristics of basin plain, remarkable traffic-dependence and water side location. Moreover, as time elapsing, the urban distribution of this region is gradually permeating towards northwest from southeast, which is reflected in meridional and latitudinal distribution of town, urban density and changes of urban distribution center. On the other side, fractal study reveals the urban system in modern Suiyuan area has fractal geometrical characteristics, setting Guisui City(Guihua City,Suiyuan City) and Baotou City as computing center, we obtain the fractal dimensions, both of which agree D<2. This means that towns in this region have been making self-organizing evolvements during their rising and developing processes. And the elements of urban system have spatial distribution characteristics whoes density attenuated gradually from center to periphery. This also explains the urban system in modern Suiyuan area has a "dual core" city-based regional spatial structure.Chapter three discusses the functional structure of urban system in modern Suiyuan area, which includes seven basic types:the comprehensive town, the Mongol-banner political center, the commodity distributing center, the transportation ferries, the business travel lodging, the mining industrial city and the religious center. There are three basic types of urban functions:the administrative town, the economic town and the comprehensive town integrated economic and administrative functions, among which the administrative towns and the economic towns are in the majority, and the comprehensive towns integrated economic and administrative functions are in the minority. The urban function types have regional diversity, this region also includes administrative commercial cities formed by close towns, of which one plays a role of "door" to the other.In Chapter four, the urban hierarchical size structure of modern Suiyuan area is studied quantitatively, making population and land requisition scale as index. According to this research, the urban population scale and land requisition scale of modern Suiyuan area are relatively small. Although the urban population is growing, it’s still far less than the Central Plain’s population. In the late Qing Dynasty the relatively populated cities, such as Guihua City, Baotou City, Fengzhen City etc, only have a population of30,000-40,000each, even the most populous town during the Republic of China merely has a population of100,000, and the city size of which are never more than11km. Form all of these, we can see the urban system of this region has obvious characteristics of bordering area. However, the unbalanced development advances the interior regional city-size hierarchy. After studying population scale by city Pyramid, urban primacy index, G.K.Zipf’s hierarchical model of urban system, the scale of urban system in modern Suiyuan area shows a Pyramid-shaped distribution. Town scale and town quantity move in the opposite direction. The hierarchical size distribution of urban system shows a primate city-oriented concave primacy-type distribution. Furthermore, the city size, street quantity, hierarchy, structure of the towns reflects partly the city hierarchy and its developing level. Although nationwide high-grade central city hasn’t been formed in modern Suiyuan area, larger cities like Guisui City, Baotou City developed in this region and became the main force propelling regional social and economic development.Chapter five discusses the development of regional traffic network and its influence to the spatial organization of urban system. As a conduit to urban spatial connection and a main force propelling the urban system’s evolvement in modern Suiyuan area, the changes of regional traffic network has a profound influence on urban spatial organization, regional structure and regional system. Before new transportation is born, the interactions and communications among towns of small and large in Suiyuan area are permitted by traditional transportation like the post-road, the trade route, the camel road and the waterway on the Yellow River. The proliferation of new transportation and communication networks during the Republic of China changes urban system, especially the railway transportation profoundly affect original location condition, function, status, traffic pattern of town and commercial network. As a result, based on the original both the urban spatial organization and the urban system deformed clearly. Then new urban system in which the construction axis is railway has started to take shape, the social economic axis of modern Suiyuan area takes embryonic form and the economic status of Suiyuan area in northwestern China has increased dramatically.The conclusion is a brief summarization of the whole text, stating the author’s views, enlightenments, suggestions and some scopes need to go much further.