Two Thousand Years Of Urban Space Development In Hubei Province And Its Relationship With The River

The study on where city appears and its dynamic mechanism is a very important academic field in the research of urban geography.The formation and development of city is not only the product of economy agglomeration, but also the result of natural geography.Moreover, river plays an very crucial role in the formation and development of city, thus the studys on why city appeared along the rivers and rivers' impact on urban systems are are the focus of urban geography.This paper, based on the Historical Maps of China, DEM data of Hubei Province,historical documents and other historiacl local records, analyze the the urban spacial development of Hubei province and the relation to rivers in the past two thousand years dynamicly from multi-perspectives, by means of GIS spacial analysis and mathematical statstics and draw the following conculsions:(1).natrual geograhpical fators, Especailly Rivers, determine the macro urban spacial distrubution in the past two thousand years. Hubei province has aboundant rivers and lakes.almost all of the cities are located along rivers. As early as the Song Dynasty, the basic frame of urban system has already set up, which based on the Han River and the Yangtze River as two axes, and a Wuhan, Jingzhou and Xiangyang as three central points. (2). In early piriod, cities are centered in the tributary areas of Hanjiang River and the Jianghan plain where the natural environment is of superiority to develop.and then given the development of social productive force and better natural environment, new cities appears to the central parts of Jianghan plain and the western mountainous areas along the Han River and the Yangtze River;in Jianghan plain where regions are internally homogeneous, Urban distrubution belongs to the partial equilibrium type. Whereas in the western mountainous areas, cities are located in mountain valleys which makes the Urban distrubution as agglomeration type.therefore in the entire region of Hubei provice, the overall urban distribution is a random type. (3). Several index analysis show that the urban spacial distrubution of Hubei province is agglomeration in the past two thousand years, but leading to equalization.when the spatial distrubution of urban development comes to a certain extent, the balance will be broken and come to the development of higher-level equalization.