Search Results (822)

Beautiful City construction is a core initiative to realize the Beautiful China vision and advance China’s progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study develops a unified evaluation framework aligned with official Chinese assessment guidelines and global sustainability objectives. Based on a 2015–2022 dataset of 126 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), we adopt Dagum’s Gini coefficient decomposition, kernel density estimation (KDE), and Moran’s I to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of beautiful city construction. The results indicate that the regional Beautiful City Construction Index (BI) increased steadily at both the regional and subregional levels, with all sample cities achieving continuous improvement. A consistent development gradient of lower reach > middle reach > upper reach was identified, with gradually narrowing inter-regional gaps. Importantly, the primary source of regional disparity shifted from inter-subregional differences to intra-subregional differences around 2021. Statistically significant positive spatial clustering was observed, with high-value clusters concentrated in downstream areas and low-value clusters in upstream areas, while the overall clustering effect gradually weakened. This study provides empirical evidence for targeted urban governance and regional coordinated development, offering a typical Chinese practice for global SDG research. Full article

Against the backdrop of China’s Dual Carbon Initiative and national transportation empowerment strategy, accelerating the low-carbon green transition of the transport sector has emerged as an imperative developmental priority. Incorporating carbon emissions as undesirable outputs into the efficiency evaluation framework, this study adopts a multi-method analytical paradigm encompassing the super-efficiency SBM model, Malmquist–Luenberger index, kernel density estimation, Dagum Gini coefficient, geographical detector model, and Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR). Based on panel data covering 30 provincial administrative regions in China from 2004 to 2022, this paper systematically investigates the spatio-temporal evolutionary patterns and intrinsic driving mechanisms of carbon total factor productivity (CTFP) within the transportation industry. The main findings are as follows: (1) The static efficiency results reveal that the national mean CTFP is below unity, indicating overall inefficiency. Nevertheless, it exhibits a fluctuating upward trend after 2009. Regionally, CTFP follows this pattern: Eastern China > Central China > national mean > Northeastern China ≈ Western China. (2) Dynamic productivity analysis shows that the annual average ML index is close to 1, demonstrating an overall upward trend in CTFP, and productivity growth is primarily driven by technological progress. (3) In terms of spatio-temporal patterns, inter-regional disparities constitute the principal source of overall spatial gaps in CTFP, with considerable contribution from transvariation density. (4) Geographical detector analysis suggests that energy intensity (EI) and economic development level are the two factors most strongly correlated with the spatial differentiation of CTFP, and interaction effects exist between them. The results from geographically weighted regression (GWR) further confirm that the strength of the correlation between each driving factor and CTFP presents pronounced regional heterogeneity. Based on these findings, differentiated regional policies for emission reduction and efficiency improvement should be formulated in accordance with the law of diminishing marginal returns. Full article

We develop a five-variable coupled dynamical system modeling the structural transition of contemporary capitalism toward technofeudalism. The state variables: feudal capital ($F$), productive capital ($K$), elite overproduction ($E$), systemic debt ($D$), and natural resources ($R$) interact through Lotka–Volterra competition, logistic saturation, and bilinear feedback, supplemented by a bounded logistic Gini diagnostic ($G$). We define collapse operationally as the simultaneous breach of three or more of five reference thresholds (feudal dominance, elite crisis, debt insolvency, resource exhaustion, extreme inequality). Because the inequality threshold is already met at $t_0$, $T_c$ is set by the feudal-dominance crossing and is definitional in part: excluding $G$, or counting only indicators not yet breached at $t_0$, yields $\approx 2053$ (debt insolvency), and varying the rule spans 2031–2075. Parameters are set within theory-motivated ranges against sparse historical points over 1990–2023; because the inverse problem is severely ill-conditioned, they are not treated as precisely estimated, and the model is exploratory rather than a forecasting instrument. The baseline indicates a threshold-driven transition on the order of one generation, with an indicative collapse time $T_c\approx 2044$ (central 90% conditional sensitivity range $\approx$ 2039–2052 under a ±30% independent-perturbation design); we report these as conditional descriptors of model behavior, not predictive probabilities. Across a 5000-member ensemble, the robust finding is qualitative: no realization avoided collapse before 2070, constraining the direction and ordering of the dynamics rather than the inevitability of any date. Sobol analysis identifies the feudal expansion rate $\alpha$ and crowding coefficient $\delta$ as dominant drivers; a frozen-Jacobian eigenvalue trace is positive at the 2024 state (${\lambda }_{max}=+0.016>0$) and turns negative around 2030; reported as an instantaneous growth diagnostic along a nonequilibrium trajectory, not as a stability criterion. In the model, no single-domain reform prevents collapse, whereas coordinated antitrust, ecological, and financial intervention yields superadditive delay (>56 years). No observations are withheld from the parameter specification, so every figure is in-sample, and the dates are ordinal markers of sequence, not forecasts. Extending the HANDY and Goodwin–Keen tradition, this is, to our knowledge, the first dynamical-systems operationalization of technofeudalism: a diagnostic laboratory with explicit, falsifiable thresholds. Full article

Synergistic governance of pollution and carbon reduction is a critical pathway for promoting the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development. Based on panel data from 30 Chinese provinces over the period 2006–2023, this study employs the super-efficiency SBM-DEA model to measure the synergistic efficiency of air pollution and carbon reduction (SE), and applies the Dagum Gini coefficient and spatial autocorrelation analysis to reveal its spatiotemporal differentiation characteristics. The modified gravity model and social network analysis are used to characterize the evolutionary patterns of the spatial network of synergistic efficiency of air pollution and carbon reduction (SEN). Furthermore, a two-way fixed-effects model and the Spatial Durbin Model are constructed to empirically examine the impact of new quality productivity (NQP) on SE and its spatial spillover effects. The main findings are as follows: First, SE exhibits an overall declining trend, with a clear gradient pattern of “East > West > Central > Northeast” and significant positive spatial agglomeration. Second, the linkage intensity of SEN has steadily increased, and inter-provincial synergistic connections have grown closer; however, the core–periphery structure remains stable, network density fluctuates at a persistently low level, and a multi-center balanced pattern has yet to emerge. Third, NQP significantly enhances SE, but green technological innovation exhibits a suppression effect along the transmission pathway. Fourth, the driving effect of NQP on SE demonstrates notable regional and resource-endowment heterogeneity, while also showing a significant positive spatial spillover effect. These findings offer policy implications for advancing regionally tailored synergistic governance of pollution and carbon reduction and for optimizing the structural configuration of inter-provincial synergistic networks. Full article

Unbalanced regional development is a long-standing spatial feature of China. Most extant studies are restricted to a single economic dimension and lack long-run comprehensive analysis that couples the economic, social and ecological dimensions. Drawing on China’s provincial panel data from 1990 to 2023, this paper constructs a comprehensive indicator system across three dimensions, measures comprehensive development levels with the entropy-weight TOPSIS method, and decomposes the overall imbalance into within-region disparity, between-region net disparity and the intensity of transvariation with the Dagum Gini coefficient, revealing the spatiotemporal evolution of imbalance across the four major zones of Southeast, Central, Western and Northeast China. The results show that the three types of imbalance are not synchronized: economic imbalance first rose and then declined, social imbalance fluctuated more strongly, and ecological imbalance changed mildly. The distribution of intra-provincial social and ecological disparities across zones is markedly crossed, whereas the cross-zone overlap of economic disparities has continuously weakened since 2000, and the gradient has become clear again. Accordingly, this paper proposes policy recommendations including three-dimensional assessment, classified governance, industrial collaboration and ecological compensation. This study enriches the multidimensional measurement paradigm of regional imbalance and provides quantitative support for coordinating innovation resources and promoting coordinated regional development. Full article

The multi-beam tracking, telemetry, and command (TT&C) scheduling problem for large-scale low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations carrying thousands of satellites brings formidable challenges. Strict resource limitations and visibility constraints trigger combinatorial explosion of feasible scheduling solutions. This paper proposes a three-phase progressive multi-beam scheduler (3PMS), which disassembles the complex integrated scheduling problem into hierarchically tractable subproblems. Phase I adopts a priority-aware first-come-first-served (FCFS) strategy combined with a dual-heap preemption mechanism to guarantee the execution of emergency tasks. Phase II implements load-balanced beam allocation based on a load-balance scoring function. Phase III introduces optimal execution window selection within visible arcs. Experiments are performed on two LEO constellation scenarios: the first is a single-shell orbital configuration with 1500 satellites, and the second is a three-shell architecture comprising 6080 satellites. Under extremely limited beam resources (1 beam), the worst-case single-beam capacity is 708 tasks per day, assuming every task consumes the maximum duration of 120 s, corresponding to 47.2% coverage for 1500 satellites and 11.6% for 6080 satellites. As the number of beams increases to five, all algorithms achieve 100% coverage for the 1500-satellite constellation, while the 6080-satellite constellation requires twenty beams for near-complete coverage. 3PMS demonstrates significant advantages in load balancing (Gini coefficient reduced from 0.0993 to 0.0003) and link quality (C/N improved by 5.5 dB). This paper verifies the feasibility of multi-beam scheduling algorithms for TT&C missions of large-scale satellite mega-constellations. Full article

From the perspective of the increasing marginal tendency toward tax avoidance, this paper proves that groups with higher wealth levels possess stronger willingness and capacity for tax avoidance, which continuously widens the wealth gap. As wealth inequality keeps worsening, it is bound to exert profound impacts on economic growth. This paper further sorts out three transmission channels through which wealth inequality affects economic growth: increasing returns to scale of physical capital investment, erosion of fiscal tax bases, and accumulation of per capita human capital. These three channels jointly generate a nonlinear impact of wealth inequality on economic growth. Based on an unbalanced cross-country panel dataset, this paper adopts the income Gini coefficient lagged by 20 years as the instrumental variable for the wealth Gini coefficient, and incorporates core variables involved in the theoretical model for empirical research. The empirical results are consistent with theoretical deductions. Unlike existing studies that only conclude a negative correlation between the two variables, this paper identifies an inverted U-shaped effect of wealth inequality on economic growth, offering new considerations for policy design by social planners. Full article

Femicide is one of the most extreme manifestations of gender-based violence and remains a persistent challenge across Latin America. This study examines the association between socioeconomic and contextual factors and femicide rates across 12 Latin American countries during 2014–2024 using an unbalanced panel dataset. The dependent variable is the femicide rate per 100,000 women, while the explanatory variables include the Gini index, GDP per capita, female labor force participation, and intentional homicide rates. Owing to heteroskedasticity, serial correlation, and contemporaneous dependence across panels, the model was estimated using Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) with a common AR(1) disturbance structure. The Gini index was negatively and statistically significantly associated with femicide rates (β = −0.057, p = 0.004), whereas intentional homicide rates showed a positive and statistically significant association (β = 0.059, p < 0.001). GDP per capita retained a negative but non-significant coefficient (β = −0.371, p = 0.076), while female labor force participation was also negative and non-significant (β = −0.008, p = 0.556). These findings indicate that the associations between femicide and socioeconomic conditions are sensitive to model specification, while income inequality and generalized lethal violence remain statistically significant correlates. The results underscore the multidimensional nature of femicide and the need for cautious interpretation of aggregate cross-national associations. Full article

Urban green space supply (UGSS) is a core component of territorial spatial planning, and the advancement of the park city initiative has been temporally associated with a systematic transformation. Differentiation in UGSS is a comprehensive issue concerning ecological environment, public welfare, and high-quality urban development, and it is closely related to the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11.7. This study employs a comprehensive approach combining spatiotemporal dynamic analysis (Mann–Kendall trend test and Theil–Sen slope estimation), differentiation measures (Gini coefficient and Theil index), and the explainable machine learning SHAP model to conduct a large-sample empirical analysis of 1760 towns in China from 2015 to 2024. The findings show the following: First, park city construction corresponds to notable spatiotemporal evolution of UGSS in China’s towns, with approximately 85% of towns showing a significant rise. Second, park city construction coincides with a reduction in differentiation in both the outcomes and processes of UGSS in China’s towns, with both the Gini coefficient and Theil index declining to varying degrees. An analysis of the Theil index further confirms that the observed changes in the Theil index are more pronounced in disadvantaged towns, and the differentiation in UGSS originates more from intra-regional disparities than from inter-regional gaps. Third, the differentiation in UGSS shows deep structural correlates, with the associations of socio-economic and natural ecological factors exhibiting various complex nonlinear associations such as inverted U-shape, arc shape, U-shape, and wave shape. These associations are specifically manifested as mixed directionality of associations, hierarchical intensity of associations, threshold-based evolutionary pathways, geographic spatial heterogeneity, and interactive relationships among factors. This study recommends that the policy design of park city construction and green space system planning should promptly establish a new model combining situational response, threshold management, and collaborative governance. The nonlinear and interpretable analytical paradigm constructed in this study holds significant value for achieving precise supply and equitable sharing of green space resources. Full article

This study proposes a game-theoretic agent-based model to investigate cooperation and competition in workplace environments. The iterated prisoner’s dilemma is implemented on a two-dimensional lattice, where agents interact locally and accumulate wealth over time. Two types of agents are considered: fixed probabilistic cooperators, who adopt a constant cooperation probability, and adaptive probabilistic cooperators, whose behavior depends on their accumulated wealth and reputation. Population composition and wealth distribution are quantified using Shannon entropy and the Gini coefficient. Numerical simulations show that fixed cooperators tend to predominate and accumulate higher average wealth. The simulations also show that increasing tolerance to defections raises average wealth and reduces inequality. In contrast, a higher cooperation probability increases wealth but may also amplify inequality. These results highlight the role of reputation and performance targets in shaping cooperation in organizational environments. Full article

Educational accessibility plays a central role in achieving spatial equity, yet most existing studies remain confined to single-municipality analyses and are heavily concentrated on highly urbanized metropolitan areas, offering little understanding of how different urban, peri-urban, and rural settings shape access to basic education. This study provides a province-wide grid-based assessment of school accessibility across Hubei, China. The accessibility analysis was conducted at a 1 km grid resolution, while the distribution of school-age population was incorporated later to evaluate inequality. Municipalities are compared using two complementary indicators: population-weighted travel distance and the Gini coefficient, capturing both accessibility levels and spatial equity. Results reveal strong spatial heterogeneity: the eastern and central plains have much shorter school travel distances than the western mountainous region. Notably, some highly urbanized municipalities achieve very short average travel distances but also display substantial internal inequalities. A two-dimensional efficiency–equity typology further highlights four distinct municipal patterns, from high-quality accessibility to dual disadvantage. Geodetector analysis identifies the key socio-economic factors shaping these spatial imbalances. These findings underscore the need for differentiated policy strategies responding to the unique spatial and socio-economic conditions of each municipality. Full article

This study examines the socio-economic structure of Rumnos, a village in the district of Devrek in the Ottoman province of Bolu (now in Devrek district, Zonguldak Province, Türkiye), on the basis of Temettuat Register no. 3378, dated 1844–1845. The analysis is confined to a single village and makes no comparisons, and its findings cannot be generalized to the country as a whole; nevertheless, they may provide a model for future research. According to this particular volume of the Temettuat Register, agriculture and animal husbandry were the village’s principal sources of income. The prevalence of occupations directly related to agriculture is remarkable, as it generates the majority of wealth. The types of taxes paid by the tax-liable heads of household, together with their incomes derived from their occupational activities, were identified, and their overall tax burdens were determined. An income distribution analysis using statistical methods was conducted for this study. A Lorenz curve was constructed, and the Gini coefficient was calculated as 0.33. The analysis determined that there was a moderate level of inequality in the income distribution among the households in the village of Rumnos. Full article

Poland’s rapid expansion of renewable energy sources (RES) and of distributed photovoltaics (PVs) in particular has increasingly collided with a finite and unevenly distributed resource: available capacity in the electricity distribution grid. This paper examines grid-connection capacity as a spatial constraint on RES development in Poland, combining a national overview of grid congestion (2023–2026) with a quantitative case study of the 52 coherent 110 kV node groups administered by ENERGA-OPERATOR S.A. under the statutory reporting regime of Article 7(8l) of the Polish Energy Law. The node-group figures are not an observed annual series: the operator’s disclosure gives the capacity available in the base year of 2018, together with the capacity it planned to make available in each year up to 2023, so the analysis characterises the spatial distribution implied by the operator’s own five-year development plan rather than realised outcomes. Using descriptive statistics, a Gini coefficient, Lorenz curve analysis, and an original growth index (the ENERGA Grid-Connection Growth Index, EGCI) developed for this study, we show that available connection capacity is markedly unequally distributed across node groups (Gini = 0.48 in 2018, rising to 0.51 by the 2023 planning horizon) and that this inequality has a distinct regional pattern: the Olsztyn branch, corresponding to the Warmia–Mazury region (Warmińsko-mazurskie voivodeship), more than doubles its share of the operator’s total available capacity under the plan (from 12.4% to 29.3%, or from 75 MW to 365 MW in absolute terms), moving from the third-lowest to the highest planned capacity among the operator’s six branches, while two of its nine node groups—including the regional capital’s own—receive no increase at all under the plan. A voivodeship-level spatial analysis, mapped using verified administrative boundary data, shows a pattern consistent with this at a national scale: Warmia–Mazury has the second-lowest installed generation capacity of Poland’s 16 voivodeships despite favourable land and irradiation conditions for photovoltaic development. Bootstrap analysis confirms this robust level of inequality while indicating that, with 52 units, the five-year increase is best read as a consistent tendency rather than as a statistically established widening; the operator-level values are specific to ENERGA-OPERATOR and are not numerically generalisable to Poland’s other four operators. We discuss the implications of these findings for grid-investment planning, RES-integration policy (cable pooling, storage co-location, curtailment reduction), and the energy-security dimension of an increasingly decentralised, weather-dependent generation system, and we identify concrete directions for future quantitative and spatial research. Full article

In the context of the global implementation of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), urban green development serves as a core practical pathway to advance SDG8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), and SDG15 (Life on Land). This study constructed a three-dimensional evaluation framework encompassing the green economy, green ecology, and green society, and utilized panel data from 282 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2009 to 2021. By integrating the CRITIC weighting method, spatial autocorrelation, the Standard Deviational Ellipse (SDE) approach, and the Dagum Gini decomposition, we systematically quantified multi-scale spatiotemporal evolution and disparity patterns at the national scale, as well as across four major economic zones and five core urban agglomerations. Nationwide, the composite green development index rose from 0.422 to 0.522 (+23.70%), while the overall Dagum Gini coefficient declined from 0.072 to 0.053 (−26.39%), with the spatial center of gravity gradually shifting toward the southwest. Eastern China persistently maintained the highest development level; Western China achieved the fastest cumulative growth (26.43%), and Northeastern China lagged behind with the lowest growth rate (20.10%). Among five major urban agglomerations, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD) shared an identical average score of 0.582, whereas the Chengdu–Chongqing (CC) agglomeration recorded the highest growth of 33.07%. This research contributes multi-scale empirical evidence for localized SDG implementation in China and provides differentiated policy insights for cross-regional green transition governance. Full article

Resource constraints in large river basins operate through interacting urban, agricultural, demographic, industrial, and ecological systems. This study develops a coordinated resilience framework for the Urban–Cropland–Population–Industry–Ecology (UCPIE) system using panel data from nine provincial-level regions along the Yellow River during 2000–2023. Coordinated and subsystem resilience were estimated with hierarchical entropy-weighted TOPSIS. Complementary disparity measures were used to assess interprovincial inequality and convergence, while relative shortage shares and indicator obstacle degrees supported structural diagnosis. Mean coordinated resilience increased from 0.2485 to 0.4107. Resilience in the Urban and Ecology subsystems increased rapidly, whereas Cropland resilience increased only marginally. The corrected Gini coefficient increased from 0.1740 in 2000 to 0.1983 in 2008 and declined to 0.1537 by 2023. The σ series indicated significant relative convergence even as absolute dispersion widened. The dominant shortage shifted from Urban and Ecology in the first stage to Population in the third stage, accompanied by a larger Cropland share. Per capita water resources and the proportion of effectively irrigated area reached obstacle degrees of 14.63% and 12.89%, respectively, in the third stage. The higher nine-region mean did not remove the provincial hierarchy, and the main internal constraints changed over time. Full article