Research On Residential Spatial Pattern And Differentiation Between Different Ethnic Groups In Lanzhou City In Transition

With a vast territory, China is home to more than one billion people and over50distinct ethnic groups. These ethnic minorities have lived an urban life for a long time, either forming a community of their own or scattering separately in the city. Those residence patterns, uniting or scattering, can be understood as a scenery or variable of how these ethnic groups interact with each other, with deeper insight and in different forms and extents. Not only for those traditional ethnic groups inhabit area, but also for places where housing market provides opportunities of autonomous choices, the differentiation of residence among different ethnic groups becomes increasingly significant. Theoretically, more staggered space constituted by different nationalities is beneficial to the interaction and communication in economy, social life, culture and other aspects among these groups, and thus build a harmonious urban environment for ethnic development. In fact, such integration described in the level of theory, is likely to cause inconvenience for residents who live in that condition, and even bring about baneful and unfortunate consequences. Until now, sociology and ethnology have already explored ways in such fields as the residence differentiation of ethnic groups and ethnic relationships, however, these studies probably lack of the spatial view due to their backgrounds, so new attempts should be applied to fields related to ethnic residence issues.Learning from other disciplines in both methodology and ideology, procedures in this paper are as follows:concept definition—theoretical reference—mode construction—mechanism analysis—empirical study. In all6chapters, it deals with the spatial pattern of ethnic residence and the issue of residence differentiation from the perspectives of human geography and planning science. Started with the conclusion of relative concepts about ethic residence, then hackled and referred from related research progress in theory, new mode on ethnic residence differentiation is established, and mechanisms on the differentiation are analyzed and interpreted subsequently. Finally, an empirical study of Lanzhou city is illustrated to confirm with the previous content.The case study in Lanzhou demonstrates that:(1) the residence spatial pattern of Hui people in Lanzhou is probably like "living together in small community while generally scattering in the city";(2) The Hui ethnic groups distribute more evenly in the four main districts of Lanzhou, but the majority of them still live in Chengguan district and Qilihe district.(3) during the further urbanization process and constant urban renewal, a part of traditional Hui people inhabit areas are forced to be separated and disorganized, as a result, a more integrated residence pattern is then generated;(4) different ethnic dwellers varies at basic properties of housing, value of location preference, life sphere and living mobility; children’s education, religious place, market trade and institutional factors are all likely to contribute to the integration or differentiation of distinct ethnic groups to some extent;(5) the residence integration has a positive impact on the harmony of ethnic relationship.