Research On Spatial Pattern Of Residents’ Inter-province Travel By Bus And Their Perception Of The Integration Of Neighboring Cities

The integration of neighbouring cities is an advanced stage of the coordinated development in metropolitan areas.In the process of regional integration,the city regions in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area have attracted much attention.But the study on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region,especially on Beijing and its surrounding counties in Hebei,is insufficient.With the support of inter-provincial bus,the metropolitan functional area of Beijing has expanded to peripheral counties outside the administrative region.Many residents in the three counties of Sanhe,Dachang,and Xianghe in Langfang share the same life space with Beijing residents.Study on the integration characteristics of Beijing and the three counties is significant to the coordinated development of Beijing and Hebei Province.The current research on the integration effects of urban regions focuses on the functional integration represented by the flow between cities,including flow of people,information,and capital,but pays little attention to the social and cultural identity of residents in the city regions.While regional identity and the sense of belonging are the ideal state of the integration of neighbouring cities and are important to promote deeper integration.In this context,the study takes Beijing and the three northern counties of Langfang as an example,uses GIS spatial analysis and social network analysis to study the spatial pattern characteristics of residents’ inter-provincial travel by bus based on questionnaire survey data,and measures the integration effect of neighbouring cities in the perspective of social cultural identity.The study also uses structural equation model to analyze the influencing mechanism of the integration perception of residents.The research conclusions are as follows.(1)Beijing and the three northern counties of Langfang have different cross-city travel groups.Most of cross-city travelers of the three counties are young and middleaged commuters with high-frequency trips between the two cities and the majority is the floating population.The cross-city travelers of Beijing have a relatively high proportion of the elderly,they visit relatives or move out to live in Langfang after retirement.The average travel time for cross-city travelers is about 2～2.5h.(2)The intensity of residents’ cross-city travel flow has spatial differentiation.The cross-city travel destinations of the three counties’ people were concentrated in the central city of Beijing(79.8%)and Tongzhou District(17.8%).Chaoyang District attracted the most of cross-city travelers,Dongcheng and Xicheng District also had concentrated travelers.Most of the cross-city travelers of Beijing went to Yanjiao and Dachang,and the travelers of Tongzhou District accounted for 1/3 of the passenger flow who went out of Beijing.Tongzhou District partly functioned as a transportation hub in inter-provincial travel.As for the specific activity nodes,cross-city commuters from the three counties were concentrated in three nodes of CBD,Wangjing and Tongzhou,while leisure activities were concentrated in the two nodes of city core and Tongzhou.The cross-city travelers of Beijing were related to the dissolution of industries,and the crosscity working population from Beijing mainly went to Yanjiao.(3)The measurement index of the integration perception includes the residents’ sense of place in the other city,the perception of personal significance brought by the cross-city traveling,and the perception of regional meaning.Most people from the three counties have a strong sense of place in Beijing and positive perception of personal significance,but their perception of regional integration is weak.They are strongly dependent on various functions of Beijing but have a weak emotional connection with it.However,cross-city travelers of Beijing have a weak sense of place and weak perception of personal significance in the three counties.Only 18.5%～30.9% of the travelers agree that the two cities are integrated.(4)The residents’ perception of regional integration is different between districts.With the support of the inter-provincial bus,the residents’ perception of integration is limited within 37～43km.Residents of the three counties have a strong sense of place in Chaoyang and Tongzhou District,and residents of these two districts also have a strong sense of integration on the three counties.The discrepancies between the integration perception and the intensity of cross-city travel flow appear in the city core and the western area of Beijing.Further study finds that the perception of regional integration is influenced by both city factors and individual behaviors.At the macro level,the urban economic gap and functional complementation promote the cross-city flow of residents and make them generate place dependence,but if the development gap is too large,it can weaken the perception of regional integration.The housing price gap has a negative effect on the sense of place of three counties’ residents,leading to their low willingness to settle in Beijing.The sense of place and regional integration of Beijing residents in the three counties also depend on geographical proximity and direct inter-provincial bus,and they have a stronger sense of place in Dachang with low population density.At the micro level,the cross-city travel frequency has an opposite effect on the construction of the sense of place of the residents from two cites.For those travelers from relatively backward areas,the increase of travel frequency can reduce their sense of place and regional identity in their destination city.Factors such as cross-city working years,age,and local household registration have a positive effect on cross-city travelers’ sense of place and regional integration.(5)This study proposed coordinated development countermeasures for the three northern counties of Langfang and Tongzhou District of Beijing from four aspects,including the different function position of Tongzhou District and the three counties in Langfang,enhancing the convenience of cross-provincial public transportation,filling the gap of the public service in the three counties,and improving the cross-border collaborative governance and cooperation mechanism.