关键词: 城市体系, 规模结构, 位序累积规模模型, 位序-规模法则

Abstract:

Based on investigating and interpreting the size structure characteristics of urban system, this article build a new method on analyzing the size structure of urban system. Adopting the resident population data of cities at county level and above, traditional rank-size rule and the rank cumulative size model proposed are used to measure the inter-provincial differences and their spatial distribution characteristics of city size structure at 2000 and 2014 in China, then discussed the geographic factors which have influence on size structure of regional urban system. The results show that the rank-size rule has some shortcomings in interpreting the characteristics of the size structure of regional urban system. Particularly, when the fitting result provided by the rank-size rule is not ideal, the β value provided by the rank cumulative size model given in this article can more realistically and objectively reflect the characteristics of the size structure of regional urban system. There is a big difference in the size structure type of urban system of provinces in China, and the β value ranks the top often belongs to the province with good physic-geographical conditions and developed socio-economic level. On the whole, the β value’s increase in the East is larger than in the West and its growth rate in the South is higher than in the North. Such change is similar to China’s population and economy center’s transfer trend in the past decade. Moreover, there is a close statistical relationship between the selected regional variables, such as regional population, urbanization, population density and road network density, and the value of β given by the rank cumulative size model. But with the development of the society and economy, the physic-geographical and infrastructures conditions’ impact on urban system size distribution is not significant.

Key words: urban system, size structure, rank cumulative size model, rank-size rule