Abstract:

Central Plains Economic Zone (CPEZ) is an important strong point in the regional economic development of China. Studies on the interaction strength among the regional cities are conducive to the analysis of cities’ economic connection degree. More importantly than all of that, this study is of great significance for urban spatial structure, spatial structural optimization of urban economy, and the development of the economic CPEZ zone. This article selected 30 provincially-administered cities from CEPZ zone to conduct analysis of Gravity Model, Potential Model, Potential Scores, and Membership Model. The the evolution process and the characteristic of the interactional spatio-temporal pattern of CEPZ cities for two decades (1990-2010) were investigated by the analysis strategy of “Line ? Point ? Surface”. Gravitational forces among different cities were calculated and symbolized into varied lines on the base of size of statistic data. Thickness of the lines represents the connection characteristics between any two cities from CEPZ. Then, the potential capability of each city was figured out by using symbolized point to identify the potential grade of each city. The symbolized point and maximum gravity joint line were linked to show the connection characteristics. Finally, seven cities were chosen to play candidate regional central role. We calculated the economic membership of the seven candidate cities. The first results of economic membership were used to select regional central cities. At the same time, the spatial dimensions were determined for each candidate city. Kriging spatial interpolation was also applied in this study to express the standardized values in spatial pattern, which is based on the potential score from each city’s economic capacity. The result shows that significant spatio-temporal differences occurred among the CPEZ cities. In “Line” level, the gravitational force has been enhanced and the count of join lines among the cities has been increased, where network structure appeared. We found that the variation of gravitational force is closely related to the count of joint lines. The same spatial pattern was observed in both of the variables. In “Point” level, “Lines” were stacked with points to perform the analysis. We also found the maximum joint line increased when the temporal-spatial difference occurred in city potential capacity. During the past two decades, the spatio-temporal differences varied significantly between selected cities. In “Surface” level, there is no change in regional central city. The other four cities, however, bear a significant change in hinterlands. Core Group—Zhengzhou Group extended in north direction in the first 10 years (1990-2000). It extended again in second 10 years (2000-2010) for eastern side. We also observed periodic characteristics of spatial shrink in the areas of high potential grade from 2000 to 2010.

Key words: interaction among the cities, city potential, Central Plains Economic Zone(CPEZ)