Population and employment density functions revisited: a spatial interaction approach

The Relationship between Urban Green Space and Urban Expansion Based on Gravity Methods

Urban green space, comprising parks, fields, woodlands, and other semi-natural areas, is a fundamental component of urban ecosystems. The determination of the relationship between urban green space and urban sprawl is necessary to understand urbanization and the provision of urban ecosystem services. It has been hypothesized that the center of urban (i.e., population and economic) areas in fast-growing cities would migrate toward urban green space over time. To test this hypothesis, urban expansion and urban green space expansion were examined in five cities in China and five cities in the U.S. that were experiencing high rates of growth. Landsat images of those cities from 2000 to 2017 were combined with annual population and economic data and used to quantify the extent and migration of the urban green space. These data were analyzed using the center of gravity method by Grether and Mathys and circular statistics were used to determine the relationship between urban green space and urban expansion. Eight out of the ten cities showed a divergent pattern, i.e., the population and economic centers moved in a different direction to that of the urban green space. The movement of the mean centers of the urban green spaces in the U.S. cities was more consistent than that of the Chinese cities. Over 18 years, the movement of urban green space and urban expansion in the 10 cities showed a synchronous growth trend; however, the proportion of urban green space in the cities decreased. The urban expansion rate exceeded the population growth rate, which led to problems with an unreasonable urban sprawl that is likely to deplete the provision of ecosystem services in the future. In conclusion, the centrifugal forces of urban green space that lead to the movement of population and economic centers away from green spaces play a larger role in urban change than the centripetal forces that pull these centers toward urban green space.

Research on the Economic Development Threshold Effect of the Employment Density of the Shanghai Consumer Goods Industry in the Context of New Manufacturing, Based on the Experience Comparison with International Metropolis

With the rise of a new generation of technology and industrial changes, the service-oriented manufacturing industry has become the direction of future development. With the background of new manufacturing, this paper constructs an economic development threshold model of employment density of consumer goods industry based on data from Shanghai and Tokyo from 2007 to 2016, and empirically analyzes the impact of the employment density of the consumer goods industry on urban economic development under different population densities. At the same time, by comparing the experience of Tokyo, the development status and prospects of Shanghai’s consumer goods industry are explored. The study found that the threshold of Tokyo’s consumer goods industry is 0.608. When population density is lower than this threshold, the consumer goods industry continues to promote the economic development of Tokyo; however, when the population density is higher than this threshold, the consumer goods industry begins to inhibit the economic development of Tokyo. The Shanghai consumer goods industry threshold is 0.329. Under the threshold, most of the consumer goods industry contributions to the economy are negative, but above the threshold, they begin to show a positive trend. The inflection point of the effect curve of Tokyo’s consumer goods industry on economic development has appeared, but the inflection point of Shanghai’s consumer goods industry has not yet appeared. Compared with Tokyo, the economic vitality of Shanghai’s consumer goods industry has not yet been fully released. With the continued increase of population density in Shanghai, the growth potential of the consumer goods industry is huge, and it is expected to reshape the flourishing age of Shanghai’s light industry brand.