Based on the connotation of urban-rural integrated development, 78 prefecture-level cities in the Yellow River Basin were taken as the case study areas, the evaluation index system of urban-rural integrated development in the Yellow River Basin was scientifically constructed from 5 dimensions, and multiple measurement methods were used to comprehensively study the spatio-temporal differentiation and driving mechan-ism of urban-rural integrated development in the Yellow River Basin in 2011—2021. The results are obtained as follows: 1) The level of urban-rural integration in the Yellow River Basin is generally on an upward trend, with low-level areas decreasing and high-level areas continuing to increase. The level of urban-rural integration in the downstream areas is generally higher than that in the middle and upstream areas, and generally shows a pattern of increasing from west to east; 2) Spatial clustering characteristics are significant, the overall existence of a more obvious spatial dependence, high value areas are mainly concentrated in the eastern and northern areas of the Yellow River Basin; 3) The integrated development of urban and rural areas is the result of multi-scale and multi-factor interactive and integrated development driven by the interaction of many factors, and the driving factors have obvious spatial and temporal differences, showing spatial heterogeneity in spatial bands or pieces of the distribution pattern.

This study aims to examine the similarities and differences between Chinese and international geographical research by comparing and analyzing research hotspots from the 35th International Geographical Congress (35thIGC) and the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG-AM), to provide insights for Chinese geographical research. We employed a Python-based web scraping program to extract and analyze report data from various countries ’ conference websites. Our analysis reveals commonalities in Chinese and international geographical research concerning global issues such as tourism, leisure and global change, and future Earth. However, some disparities exist in research foci and methodologies. At the 35th IGC, international research emphasized socio-cultural dimensions, including gender and geography, and cultural approach, while Chinese scholars focused more on areas closely aligned with national development strategies, such as land use and agricultural geography. Moreover, the 2024 AAG-AM data indicate that international research excels in environmental and Earth Sciences, GeoAI, and deep learning, whereas Chinese research concentrates on geospatial solutions for major challenges and human dynamics. This study suggests that Chinese geographical research could draw upon international experiences, adopt interdisciplinary research methods, utilize advanced technological tools, focus on social justice and cultural diversity, strengthen research in political geography and area studies, and enhance international cooperation. These efforts will elevate the international standing of Chinese geographical research and amplify its role in the global geographical arena.

There has long been a discursive separation between workspace and home. Based on the geography of home theory, this article explores the process of constructing home within the livelihood space of operational migrants through in-depth interviews and participatory observation. The findings reveal that the home-making practices of business migrants illustrate the coexistence of workspace and home. Firstly, a stable business location is central to the home-making efforts of business migrants, providing them with a sense of ontological security and belonging. Secondly, the practice of domesticating business space is crucial for the construction of a “livelihood home”. Through self-employment and family management, business migrants can flexibly navigate their business and family responsibilities,thereby integrating the boundaries between work and life. Thirdly, through their business activities, migrants develop a local network of business relationships, express a positive local identity,and integrate into their new environment. Business cooperation reinforces existing kinship and geographic networks, thereby maintaining close ties to their original home. This paper enriches the study of the geography of home, enhances our understanding of the multiple functions and scales of home, and constructs a theoretical framework for the “ home of livelihood” contributing to the comprehension of business-oriented migration from a geographic perspective.

Knowledge innovation network is the macro-geographical characterization of the cooperative relationship of micro-innovation subjects. The exploration of the structure of Chinese city tourism knowledge innovation network and its formation mechanism under the internationalization perspective is of great significance for tapping the internationalization level of city tourism knowledge, enhancing inter-city tourism knowledge cooperation and cultivating innovation growth poles. We constructed the tourism knowledge innovation network of Chinese cities with the co-authored thesis data of cities in “Web of science”, and analyzed the spatial and topological evolution characteristics of the network in the time periods of 2011—2014, 2015—2018, 2019—2022. The spatial and topological evolution characteristics of the network are analyzed in three periods of time, and then the weighted exponential random graph model (ERGM) is invoked to quantitatively study the influence of endogenous and exogenous factors on the formation and evolution of the network. The results show: 1) The scale of the network is expanding rapidly, and the overall strength and number of links are steadily increasing, with the spatial pattern changing from a simple structure with Hong Kong as the single center of radiation to a complex network with multiple centers of radiation; 2) The “ small world”character of the network is becoming more pronounced, and there is a clear tendency for cities to connect on the basis of merit; 3) The centrality of the nodes in the network varies widely, with Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou, and Beijing being the central cities for tourism knowledge innovation; 4) In terms of the driving mechanism, multiple factors such as self-organization, meritocratic connectivity, tourism research investment, domestic tourism income, per capita gross regional product, and social proximity combine to contribute to the formation and evolution of the tourism knowledge and innovation network, with the positive influence of city attribute variables being stronger than that of multidimensional proximity.

The quality of tourism resources is the material basis for the high-quality development of tourism, providing a strong attraction for the convergence of tourism flow. Based on the current real problems such as the difficulty of realizing the economic value of tourism in ancient villages and towns in Yunnan Province and the imbalance of development, this paper analyzes the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of the coupled and coordinated development of the resource quality of ancient villages and towns and the tourism flow of 125 county-level administrative units in Yunnan Province in 2019 to 2022 by using the coupling coordination degree model, the Dagum Gini coefficient, and the gray correlation degree model. The study found that: 1) The spatial distribution of coupling coordination in Yunnan Province is based on the axis of “Diqing-Lijiang-Dali-Chuxiong-Yuxi”, and the development levels on both sides of the axis are mostly lower than those in the axis. 2) During the study period, the overall level of coupling coordination in Yunnan Province has gone through an evolutionary process of “low level coupling-antagonistic stage”, but it still belongs to a relatively low coupling level. 3) During the study period, the overall level of coupling coordination in Yunnan Province has gone through an evolutionary process of “low level coupling-antagonistic stage”, but it still belongs to a relatively low coupling level. 4) The proportion of tertiary industry income in GDP and the number of tourist trips are the core factors affecting the coupled and coordinated development of the resource quality of ancient villages and towns and tourism flow in Yunnan Province. Based on the analysis, Yunnan Province should pay attention to the dual balanced development of state, city and county-level administrative units, promote the development of regional characteristics, multi-point radiation industrial layout, break through the current development dilemma, and achieve high-quality development.

Bike-sharing is a new urban infrastructure with low-carbon and environmentally friendly pratices, directly contributing to the sustainable development of cities. However, most existing studies overlook both the distributed agency of bike-sharing and the dynamic ralational networks and operational logics underpinning it. Agency, as emphasized in assemblage theory, is not exclusive to humans but extends to non-human entities. Therefore, this paper adopts the urban assemblage perspective as its methodological freamework to analyze how bike-sharing is em-bedded into the fabric of everyday urban life and to uncover the theoretical logic behind this phenomenon. Urban assemblage provides a lens to navigate the complexity of urban systems, charac-terized by entangled materiality, emotions, governance, and non-linear causality. This study in-corpoates two axes of material/expressive and territorialization, and two core concepts, distributed agency and relations of exteriority, to reveal the “blackbox” of bike-sharing through qualitative research methods. First, it examines the temporarily stabilized, multidimensional relational network of “human-technology-bike-space”, explaining the daily practices of bike-sharing in urban public spaces through a dynamic and non-linear perspective. The findings highlight that bike-sharing emerges as a product of continuous negotiation between human and non-human elements. Second, the paper reflects on urban ontology, social-technological interaction and techno-logy influence on subjectivity, aiming to inspire social and cultural geographers to generate geo-graphical knowledge aligned with the global trends of urbanization and intelligence. Finally, through the interpretive framework of multiple power game and spatial evolution, the research broadens the scope of society-technology interactions, offering novel insights into the transforma-tion and sustainable development of Chinese cities from a new perspective.

In China, investment banks play an important role as intermediaries in companies’ initial public of-ferings. The economic geography of investment banks is one of the keys to understanding economic dynamics. However, the existing literature pays little attention to the geographical pattern and influencing factors of China’s investment banks. Therefore, this paper takes Chinese investment banks as the research object and studies the spatial pattern and influencing factors of the service capability of investment banking departments of Chinese securities companies through their initial public offering (IPO) business. In the study of spatial pattern, this paper constructs a database of Chinese A-share IPOs from 1993 to 2020. Based on the significance of IPO amount to investment banking services, this paper puts forward a method to calculate the total value of urban investment banking services, and increases the weight of urban investment banking services according to IPO amount. In this paper, the consumer price index (CPI) is used to unify the purchasing power of the initial public offering amount of A-share listed companies in the past 30 years, and the data are standardized. In terms of the research on influencing factors, this paper collected the data of all 35 cities with investment banking service capability from 2006 to 2020, and established a two-way fixed effect regression model for analysis. The explained variable is the total value of city investment banking services, and the explanatory variables are human capital factor,city level and city innovation power. The main findings of the study are as follows: 1) China’s investment banking service pattern is primarily centered in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, forming a dense distribution pattern in the southeastern region and a sparse distribution in the northeast, northwest, and southw-est China. Overall, the allocation of investment banking service resources in China is uneven, and there is a trend of spatial agglomeration; 2) Beijing is China’s investment banking service center. In addition to Shang-hai and Shenzhen, cities such as Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Fuzhou have performed well. The mutual service levels between “Beijing-Shenzhen”and “Beijing-Shanghai”are high, and the cooperation is close. Beijing has the highest self-service value, while Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Shanghai have relatively low self-service ratios; 3) Urban human capital level, administrative level, and urban innovation capability have significant positive impacts on urban investment banking service capabilities. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that they have significant positive impacts on the investment banking service capabilities in the eastern region, while the impacts in the central, western, and northeastern China are not obvious or negative. This paper focuses on the geographical pattern of investment banks in China, and provides informative evidence on the spatial differences and influencing factors of the service capabilities of the industry, which makes up for the lack of geographical attention to investment banks in existing studies. On the other hand, from the perspective of financial geography, this paper deepens the understanding of regional development imbalance, and provides reference for further strengthening inter-regional financial cooperation, building financial center cities and studying the pattern of regional economic development in China.

In the digital age, network flow has profoundly altered both production and daily life, presenting new opportunities and challenges for places as well. The flow economy serves as a significant carrier of new quality productivity and a vital means to drive place development. Developing new quality productivity tailored to local conditions requires a key focus on the coupling relationship between flow and place. This study fo- cuses on the relationship between flow and place, summarizing the impact of flow on place development trends. It analyzes the restructuring of place by flow in spatial, emotional, social, and economic dimensions, constructing a schematic representation of the relationship between flow and place development. Three types of coupling between flow and place are delineated: strong coupling, weak coupling, and decoupling. Based on this analysis, suggestions for collaborative governance are proposed. Geography needs to enhance its interdisciplin- ary integration with other fields, delving deeper into the mutual shaping and construction processes and mech- anisms between flow and place. This will facilitate the innovation of place theories and serve the national strategy of modern governance. This endeavor seeks to provide a new theoretical foundation, practical strategies, and experiential insights for the localized development of new quality productivity, thereby promot- ing the sustainable development of the tourism industry with stability and long-term vision. Simultaneously, it aims to offer a fresh perspective for expanding and deepening research on the relationship between flow and place.

Optimizing land use objectives offers effective tools for judicious resource allocation. Simulating future land use and carbon stock changes is vital for formulating regional sustainability policies and enhancing terrestrial ecosystem carbon storage. This paper analyzed the spatial and temporal differences in land use and carbon storage from 2000 to 2020, predicted the spatial and temporal differences in land use changes and car-bon storage under four development patterns, namely, “natural development pattern (BAU), urban develop-ment pattern (RED), cultivated land protection pattern (CPS), and ecological protection pattern (EPS)” in 2030 by constructing the coupled land use model (PLUS-InVEST), and estimated the economic value of the carbon storage by combining the formula of compounded present value and compounded terminal value in Lanzhou City from 2000 to 2030. The results showed that land use changes were dominated by the decrease of grass-land area and the increase of building land area in Lanzhou City from 2000 to 2020, with a loss of 61.77×10⁴t of carbon storage during the 20-year period. With the exception of the EPS, in which the carbon storage in-creased by 5.09 ×10⁴t, all other scenarios showed different degrees of carbon loss compared to the 2020, with the largest loss of carbon in RED at 56.46×10⁴t. In this study, the economic value of carbon storage increased by 10.3×10⁸yuan in Lanzhou City from 2000 to 2020 through the compound present value method, which is mainly attributed to the significant increase in carbon price on the time scale. Compared to the economic value of carbon storage in 2020, the EPS has the highest economic value of carbon storage at 34.58×10⁸yuan, which is the optimal development model for the study area. This study has important practical significance for the low carbon development of land resources and scientific decision-making of ecosystem management in Lanzhou.

Return migration has become a notable socio-economic trend in the new stage of China's urbanization, and the analysis of its driving mechanism has received extensive academic attention. As a micro behavior, the return of migrants is not only affected by personal and family factors, but also closely related to external environment. However, existing studies have focused on the role of individual factors, but not enough research has been conducted on the relationship between regional contexts and return migration. We introduce a gradient boosting decision tree model in the field of machine learning, based on the data from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, with the return intention as the response variable and the regional contexts—Both in the place of origin and destination—As well as migrants' personal and household factors as the explanatory variables, focusing on the non-linear influence of the regional contexts on the return migration intentions and the threshold effect. The results show that: 1) The total contribution of the local contexts of the place of place of the origin and destination to the intentions of the migrants to return is 44.1%, which is an important factor influencing the return intentions, and the contributions of the two places is roughly equal. Among these, medical and health resources and air pollution are extremely important in both places. In addition, economic growth in the place of origin is also important for the return intention of migrants, while the climatic condition in the place of destination is more important; 2) There are both non-linear and linear relationships between local contextual factors and migrants' intention to return. Among them, medical and health resources, basic education resources, air pollution have obvious non-linear effects on the return intention, while economic growth and temperature conditions have mainly linear effects; 3) The influence of individual factors on return intention is mainly nonlinear effect. There is an irregular U-shaped relationship between age, migration duration and return intention, and the non-linear influence of household income is more complex. There is an obvious threshold effect between household housing expenditure and return intention, and a negative correlation between migrant's education level and return intention. This study incorporates the local contexts of the place of origin and destination into the analytical framework for the mechanism of return migration, identifies the relative importance of the local context and individual characteristics of the two places on the return intention of the migrants, and reveals the specificity and complexity of internal return migration in China, which contributes to deepening the research on migration in the new era and provides scientific reference for policy makers.