The Study On The Evolution Of The Urban System In Shandong Province

The urban system has always been the focus in the research of subjects, such aseconomics, geography, demography, city planning and others. There are manyliteratures on urban system, the content and methods of the research are abundant. Theresearch on urban system start with the development and the space structure ofurban.With the development of the cities, to deal with the big four problems existingin the city of “work, traffic, residence, leisure”, people put forward the concretesolutions in terms of the city planning practice. Then some scholars carried out a moresystematical study of the urban system by establishing the model of the urban system.Judging from the current research results, although the research of urban system whichconsiders “three structures” as the core is more systemic, the research on the integrity,relevance and the dynamic of the three structure is still obviously insufficient. Forinstance, more analysis about the present situation of “three structure” and lessresearch on its historical evolution, more descriptions of phenomenon and less researchon its formation mechanism, more research based on programmatic, but lessoperational guidance. According to the problems existing in the current research, thisarticle starts with the historical evolution and the dynamic mechanism of formation ofthe urban system, considers the urban system in Shandong province as the researchobject, analyses the historical evolution of the three structure of urban system inShandong province, explores the causes of formation and evolution of Shandongurban system, and on this basis puts forward some operable countermeasures topromote the further development of Shandong urban system.The main body of this thesis is divided into five parts:The first part systematically combs the related theory and literature on urbansystem. On the basis of defining relevant concepts of city and urbanization, urban centers and urban system, This part systematically combs the central place theory, thepoint axis theory, the growth pole theory and the core-periphery theory. These theorieslay the theoretical foundation for the development of the urban system. The existingliterature mainly embodied in the research of the three structures, the dynamicmechanism of urban system and the study of urban system planning, etc. Bysystematically reviewing the existing theory and empirical study, the author believesthat the current academic study of urban system show the following characteristics,that is, the study on integration, correlation and the dynamics of three structure isinadequate, more research on descriptions of phenomenon, less on its historicalevolution and its formation mechanism, more research based on programming, but lesspractical operational guidance.The second part systematically elaborates the evolution of urban system inShandong province in terms of the scale structure, the functional structure, and thespatial structure. Through the historical evolution of the number of grade town,primacy and the rank-size structure, we can find out the tendency that the level thehierarchical structure of Shandong urban system is constantly improving, Thepopulation scale is growing and city development dispersed after gathering. Bystudying the functional structure evolution with indicators such as function index andindustrial structure, we conclude that urban functional classification in Shandongprovince is obvious, however the changing of city function slowly. By studying thespatial structure with indicators such as urban density, city influence strength andagglomeration-fragmentation index, we conclude that at present the spatial distributionof urban system in Shandong province are gradually spread out from the status ofagglomeration.The agglomeration effect is not obvious.The third part analyzes the current development of urban system in Shandongprovince and the existing problems in depth. At present, Shandong province hasalready formed the central urban regions where Jinan is the center, the Shandongpeninsula urban region with the core city of Qingdao, the Yellow River Delta townconcentrated belt and southern town concentrated belt. Depend on the scale structure、the function structure and the spatial structure, some problems existing inthe urban system in Shandong province, such as the imperfect scale structure and thespatial structure need to be improved, the function structure and the developmentbetween city and rural areas is not harmonious.The forth part mainly discusses the influence of the urban system of Shandongprovince from different aspects such as natural endowment, economic growth, trafficsystem, institutional structure, regional influence from other areas. From the naturalaspect, the location is the necessary condition to form the town. The economic growthis the important factors that affect urban system development and changes, because theevolution of the urban system is the result of the location choice of social economicactivity, is also a dynamic process of regional spatial enterprise, combination, andconcentration in all sorts of social and economic activities. As one of the importantindexes of regional accessibility, transportation system has important effects on thedevelopment of the urban system. The conduct of local governments is anotherelement of the non-marketing factors which affecting the development of urbansystem.From the above, the fifth part gives countermeasures and suggestions on how tooptimize the urban system from three aspects: the grade scale structure, functionalstructure, spatial structure, and enhance the coordination of the big cities and smallercities.