Study On The Spatial Evolution Measurement And Driving Force Of Counties In Less Developed Areas ——Taking Four Counties Of Hunan And Hubei Province As Examples

The less developed areas are relatively weak regions of Chinese social and economic development,and also cover all the poor areas currently existing in China.Counties are relatively concentrated regions of social and economic resources in less developed areas.They are the link among the vast number of rural areas,towns,and regional central cities.They are large in number and widely distributed.Therefore,the development of counties in less developed regions is crucial to China’s overall economic and social development.It is related to China’s future urbanization development process and quality,and it will also have a profound impact on targeted poverty alleviation.For a period of time,many problems have been exposed in the process of the spatial evolution of counties in less developed regions in China,such as the speed of land urbanization which is generally faster than the speed of population urbanization,the waste of land resources and the increasingly intensify conflict between human and nature,etc.There are many complicated socio-economic backgrounds about these problems,which have an adverse impact on the healthy development of Chinese urbanization and the realization of the Two Centenary Goals.Therefore,it is very urgent and necessary to study the spatial evolution characteristics and driving force of counties in less developed regions.In Hunan and Hubei Province,Pingjiang County,Huarong County,Luotian County and Xiaochang County were selected in this paper as typical cases to study the spatial evolution characteristics and driving force of counties in less developed areas.First,based on the image data,socioeconomic data,urban construction data,and POI data of the four case cities,ENVI 5.3 and Arc GIS 10.2 software were used to identify and extract the urban built-up area scopes of the four case cities at different periods by the remote sensing image.Secondly,multiple indicators such as evolution speed,intensity index and elastic coefficient were selected to measure the urban spatial evolution speed,intensity,coordination,spatial differentiation,morphological change and central pattern of the four case cities,and then summarize the spatial evolution’s general characteristics of counties in less developed regions.Finally,according to the perspectives of natural geographic factors,socio-economic factors and government administrative factors,the driving force of the spatial evolution of counties in less developed areas is studied through qualitative and quantitative statistical provided by SPSS 24.0 statistical software.The main research conclusions of this article are as follows:1)From 1990 to 2018,the spatial evolution characteristics of counties in Chinese less developed regions are mainly included as follows: First,the scopes of the urban built-up area increase unsteadily,and the urban boundary generally changed from regular to irregular.Then,the two modes,or external expansion and internal filling,alternately exist and become the dominant modes of the spatial evolution of counties in less developed areas,and the external expansion modes generally include axial expansion,spread expansion and enclave expansion.Next,the construction of counties was mostly driven by the investment of land and capital.The urbanization of land was generally faster than the urbanization of population,and the coordination of urban spatial evolution is poor.Finally,the county center pattern generally changed from the Monocentric City to the Polycentric City.The aggregation extent of various urban function is uneven,and and the the Polycentric City Pattern is still in the infant stage.2)The driving force of the spatial evolution of counties in less developed areas is as follows.First,the natural geographical conditions are the natural background of the county,which has an impact on the basic form,scale and development direction of the county.Second,the socio-economic factors,such as economic growth,urbanization level,and road traffic conditions etc,have a greater impact on the spatial evolution of counties in less developed areas.Economic growth can promote urban economic activities,and it is the fundamental driving force for the spatial evolution of the county.Meanwhile,increasing the urbanization level means increasement of the urban population,which is the main body of urban production and consumption,so the urbanization level is an important driving force for the spatial evolution of the county.Additionally,the improvement of road traffic enhances the value of adjacent land,thereby attracting urban construction activities along the traffic line,so it plays an important role in guiding the spatial evolution of the county.Third,the main government administration factors influencing the spatial evolution of counties in less developed areas include the adjustment of administrative divisions,the establishment of new urban areas,the overall planning of cities,and the will of chief executives.The adjustment of administrative divisions and the establishment of new districts mainly affect the size of the urban development space.The impact of the overall urban planning is mainly reflected in the orientation,direction and specific layout of the county,and the chief executive’s will has a major impact on the county’s construction,management decisions,and the direction and scale of the county’s development,etc.