Spatio-temporal analysis of urban spatial interaction in globalizing China—A case study of Beijing-Shanghai Corridor

This paper aims to explore urban geography with a new perspective. Endowed with the urban geography connotations, an improved data field model is employed to integrate temporal dimension into spatial process of cities in a typical region in this article. Taking the Beijing-Shanghai Corridor including 18 cities as an example, the authors chose the city centricity index (CCI) and the spatial data field model to analyze the evolution process and features of sub-region and urban spatial interaction in this corridor based on the data of 1991, 1996 and 2002. Through the analysis, we found that: 1) with the improvement of the urbanization level and the development of urban economy, the cities’ CCI grew, the urban spatial radiative potential enhanced and the radiative range expanded gradually, which reflects the urban spatial interaction’s intensity has been increasing greatly; 2) although the spatial interaction intensity among the cities and sub-regions in the Beijing-Shanghai Corridor was growing constantly, the gap of the spatial interaction strength among different cities and sub-regions was widening, and the spatial division between the developed areas and the less developed areas was obvious; and 3) the intensity of the spatial interaction of Beijing, Shanghai and their urban agglomerations was far greater than that in small cities of other parts of the corridor, and it may have a strong drive force on the choice of spatial location of the economic activities.