Understanding land use change patterns of rural town settlements (RTSs) is crucial for rural and small-town planning; however, few studies have explored pattern mining approaches to RTS trajectory analysis. In this study, we adopted a novel method by building sequence alignment method (SAM) to detect representative trajectory clusters of land use change of 1158 RTSs in seven waves from 1980 to 2015 in Guangdong, China. The results suggest that there are 10 clusters of RTSs with varying trajectories of land use change, implying their differences in the development processes and underlying socioeconomic, demographical, and institutional factors. A spatial distribution map of RTSs shows that stable cultivated ecological and stable ecologically dominant RTSs are distributed in the northern, eastern, and western parts of Guangdong, whereas stable rural construction and stable mixed construction RTSs are mostly located around the provincial boundary. Notably, 73% of the RTSs that have undergone changes in land use types are located in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), including urbanized and agricultural upgraded RTSs. The analysis presented here summarizes the driving forces of the spatial evolution of RTSs, including the location, landforms, industries, and policy factors. This study provides dynamic policy implications to understand longitudinal and sequential spatial restructuring and regional coordinated development in the fast-growing PRD area.
Understanding the spatial structure of a megaregion with urban and rural areas is crucial for promoting sustainable urbanization and urban–rural integration. Compared to the city network (or the network of urban areas), however, fewer studies focus on the network connecting rural areas or on the comparison of regional structures between urban and rural networks. Using weighted daily mobility flows from the massive mobile-phone signaling data, this study constructs an urban–urban mobility (UUM) network and an urban–rural mobility (URM) network in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region. A weighted stochastic block model (WSBM) was adopted to identify and compare the latent mesoscale structures in the two networks. Results investigated a gradient community mesoscale structure nested with typical core–periphery (CP) structures in the UUM network and an asymmetric bipartite mesoscale structure mixed with CP hierarchies in the URM network. In a comparison of the different spatial configuration of urban/rural nodes and groupings of their roles, positions, and linkages, the study yielded empirical insights for renewed urban–rural interaction and potential planning pathways towards urban–rural integration.
Mobility plays a critical role in promoting rural development. However, the current knowledge regarding the factors that influence mobility between rural towns is limited. The objective of this study is to explore the impact of administrative division and regional accessibility on rural mobility to inform development policies and strategies. The administrative division is demarcated by district and city boundaries, and regional accessibility is assessed using various modes of transportation, including cars, high-speed railways (HSRs), and intercity commuter railways (ICRs). A flow-based geographically weighted regression (FGWR) method is employed based on mobile phone signaling data to quantify the associations and identify the local effects of these factors in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). The findings suggest that both administrative division and regional accessibility significantly influence rural mobility. Specifically, the effects of district boundaries on commuting mobility are more pronounced in the central areas along the Pearl River, while the effects of city boundaries on non-commuting mobility between the core area and surrounding regions are more significant. With regard to regional accessibility, cars are the preferred mode of transportation for connections between the core areas of cities along the Pearl River, whereas HSR is favored more for non-commuting trips between the northwest and center regions. This study provides novel empirical insights into the understanding of rural mobility and has significant implications for promoting regional integration.
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