Research on Spatial Recognition and Evolution of Urban Agglomeration

Dear Colleagues,

The accurate identification of urban agglomeration spatial scope is the key to the smart and compact development of urban agglomerations. A clear and reasonable spatial scope of urban agglomeration is of great significance to the reasonable functional integration and coordinated development of cities in the region. However, the concept and connotation of the spatial scope of urban agglomeration have not been finalized so far. In the current academic discussion, the researchers' inconsistency between the connotation and standard of urban agglomeration affects the comparability of research results and the value of academic debate. Because the spatial form of urban agglomeration has the characteristics of dynamic evolution and boundary fuzziness, the research on the quantitative identification of the spatial scope of urban agglomeration is still in the exploratory stage. The identification of urban agglomeration spatial scope should take into account both theoretical research and practical operation, constantly deepen the concept understanding, integrate a variety of model methods, and continuously improve the scientific objectivity of urban agglomeration spatial scope identification.

With the increasing interaction of people flow, logistics, traffic flow, capital flow and information flow among cities, urban flow gradually blurs the boundaries of time and space, and promotes the relative position, correlation and interaction of cities in the regional scope to show new characteristics such as agglomeration and diffusion. As a form of integration with huge flow in a certain region, the flow space of urban agglomeration has become the focus of research on the spatial structure of urban agglomeration. How to identify the structural characteristics of urban agglomeration flow space and reveal its structural deformation and pattern reconstruction caused by the spatial scope of urban agglomeration is also an urgent and complex problem to be solved in the research of urban agglomeration spatial structure.

This Special Issue concentrates on the spatial identification and evolution of urban agglomeration. Papers focusing on any topic related to those listed shown below are welcome. Both theoretical and applied original papers will be considered. Systematic reviews that combine and summarize the results of the literature on urban agglomeration spatial identification are also welcome.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Spatial scope identification method of urban agglomeration;
• Spatial dynamics and expansion model of urban agglomerations;
• Application of spatio-temporal big data in the research on spatial identification and evolution of urban agglomeration;
• Spatial structure identification of urban agglomeration from the perspective of urban flow space;
• Identification standards of urban agglomeration space;
• Hierarchical structures of city network from;
• Network structure of ‘space of flows’ in urban agglomeration;
• Spatial structure stability of urban agglomerations;
• Polycentric network development pattern of urban agglomeration;
• Formation mechanism of spatial scope of urban agglomeration.

Prof. Jinghu Pan
Guest Editor

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