Study On The Characteristics Of Ninghai - Hangzhou - Ningbo Expressway Corridor And Its Urban Connection

Highway corridor is a new type of regional spatial structure, which is one of theforms of transport corridors. As a banded regional economic system, Highwaycorridor has linear transportation network which is composed of highway and itssupporting road for linear axis[1]. The main driving force of urban development is toprovide its products and services outside of the area, so city contacts is the inherentrequirement and the necessary conditions to the city’s economic development, whichmust be supported by advanced transportation networks and modern communicationfacilities[2]. Highway works as a basic axis of the highway corridors, with a largecapacity, fast, flexible, efficient and other advantages, undertaking passenger andfreight transportation links among cities, strengthening inter-urban linkages, playinggathering and diffusion roles on the process of restructuring of space in urban areas,promoting the evolution of social and economic development of the region and itsspatial structure, in the meantime it can coordinating the function of the node cityeffectively[3].Yangtze River Delta is one of the world’s six major urban agglomerations, withShanghai as the center, at the same time with intensive city distribution, developedeconomy and strong comprehensive strength. The demand of Yangtze River Delta fortransportation especially highway is higher. In this paper, the research subject is theNanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highway corridor which is composed of theShanghai-Nanjing, Shanghai-Hangzhou, Hangzhou-Ningbo highway. According tothe channel effects, the economic radiation effects and the highway interchangesopera-tional features of highway corridor, this paper selecting the weighted averagetime distance, socio-economic comprehensive value and30minutes to the highwayentrances and exits which proposed by Lei Zhongmin[4]as three indicators, to explorethe spatial extent of the Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Highway corridor withoverlay calculating based on Arcgis and Spss software, then to study the scale patt-ern of the citites in Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highway corridor with rank-size rule and fractal theory, finally to discuss the intensity and direction of city con-tacts in Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highway corridor with gravity modeland membership grade.According to the study, there are29county-level administrative units inNanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highway corridor, including10prefecture-level city municipal district,16county-level cities and3counties. The area of corridor is39,600square kilometers, accounting for18.79%of the entire Yangtze River Delta.Although Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highway corridor with small propor-tion of area in the whole Yangtze River Delta, it has a strong accumulation effect, with60.61%of the GDP value,44.67%of the population,55.32%of fixed assetinvestment and63.39%of the industrial output of the Yangtze River Delta. Otherwisethe per capita GDP of Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highway corridor ishigher than the average level in Yangtze river delta.The city scale in Shanghai-hangzhou-ningbo highway corridor is given priority tothe medium-sized city, quantity of small city is little on the contrary. In addition, thenumber of mega-cities and large cities which have more than one million non-agricultural population is seven. As the first city, Shanghai still has the prominentmonopoly position on the economic, financial, trade, transportation, technology andother facts. There are still some gaps between the prospected urban scale balance andthe reality of Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highway corridor.The county-level administrative units in Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbohighway corridor can be divided into five levels by their centrality value. Shanghairanks the first center of the corridor, Nanjing and Hangzhou ranks the second center,followed by Wuxi, Suzhou, Ningbo and Changzhou the third center, then Wujiang,Kunshan, Jiangyin, Changshu and Zhenjiang the fourth, the remaining17cities ranksthe last. The urban economic influence in Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbohighway corridor is mainly concentrated in the first and second central cities, whichhave strong economic radiation ability, while the fourth and fifth central cities hasweak economic influence, strong dependence on other cities especially those first andsecond central cities.The urban interaction in the Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highwaycorridor is different obviously. Shanghai has the strongest urban interaction, whileHangzhou and Nanjing as the second central city with weak economic radiationintensity, relatively weak economic influence which is far less than Shanghai. Theattractions of cities in Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highway corridor belong-ing to Jiangsu Province are better than Zhejiang Province. The directions of urbanlinkages in Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highway corridor are mainly in thedirection of Shanghai-Nanjing, Shanghai-Hangzhou, Hangzhou-Ningbo highway,which expands as a “Z” shaped axis. There are two main direction, the first one withShanghai as the center, extending as concentric circles, which is the main status of the corridor; the second one with Hangzhou, Suzhou and Wuxi as a secondary center.Overall, the urban contacts in Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo highway corridorare mainly concentrated on the middle part of the corridor, namelyChangzhou-Shanghai section of the Nanjing-Hangzhou Highway, all of the Shanghai-Hangzhou Highway and the part of Hangzhou-Shaoxing of the Hangzhou-NingboHighway, which has a high level of economic development influenced by Shanghaivia strong economic radiation. While Nanjing and Ningbo located at the ends of thecorridor, with weak gravitational value, especially Nanjing as a secondary center cityand the capital city, the weak gravity will slow the speed of its economic growth.