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375 Evolving core-periphery interactions in a rapidly expanding urban landscape: The case of Beijing Ye Qi 1, , Mark Henderson 2 , Ming Xu 3 , Jin Chen 1 , Peijun Shi 1 , Chunyang He 1 & G. Wil- liam Skinner 4 1 College of Resources and Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China; 2 Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; 3 Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551; 4 Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA;
(Corresponding author: yqi@nature.berkeley.edu)
Received 16 April 2002; accepted in revised form 17 April 2003 Key words: Beijing, core-periphery, hierarchical regional space, landscape dynamics, urbanization, land use change model Abstract We characterized and analyzed the dynamics of a rapidly expanding urban landscape of Beijing Municipality, based on the Hierarchical Regional Space (HRS) model. We focused on ecological processes such as ows of energy, materials and population between the urban core and its periphery, and how these processes co-evolved with urbanization. We treated the HRS as an alternative to the cellular automata (CA) approach to characterizing and modeling of landscape dynamics. With LANDSAT data, we showed that the urban area of Beijing expanded from 269 km 2 to 901 km 2 in the period from 1975 to 1997, an increase of 2.35 times in 22 years. Meanwhile, a number of secondary urban centers formed on areas that used to be sparsely populated around the city. These secondary centers quickly expanded and ultimately merged with each other and with the urban core. The changes in spatial pattern and organization were accompanied by evolution of urban functions and particularly the interactions between the urban core and its periphery. We demonstrated a dramatic increase in dependence of the urban core on the periphery as well as the cores inuence on the periphery with a case analysis of the vegetable supply to Beijing. The tightening link between the city and its periphery reinforces the urbanization process and further drives the transformation of the regions landscape. We conclude that the HRS model is capable of characterizing the patterns and processes of complex and dynamic landscapes such as the case of Beijing, and this model has great potential for quantitative modeling of human dominated landscapes as well. Introduction Urbanization, a traditional research subject in geo- graphy and regional economics, has received increas- ing interest from ecologists who treat the process as transformation of landscape patterns and functions or as change in land use and land cover (Huang 1998; Bessey 2002). Despite the long history of the study of pattern and process of land use in geography, the resurged interest in land use and land cover change in the last decade was due primarily to its implications to global and regional climate change (IPCC 2001). Land use and land cover changes contribute, on average, more than 20% to the buildup of CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere (Houghton 1999), and they affect the regional energy and water balance through the change of the albedo and land surface processes. As a major component of the global and regional environmental change, land use and land cover changes have a pro- found effect on the regional and global biodiversity (Chapin et al. 2000). Two major types of landscape transformation can be identied at regional level. The rst is the con- version of natural vegetation to agricultural land, e.g., 376 the agricultural development in the Amazon basin in Brazil (Skole and Tucker 1994). The second is ex- pansion of urban landscape, which can be found all over the world, particularly along the coastlines of the continents, and around the existing metropolitan areas. Although urbanization is less extensive in area as com- pared to agricultural development, it has intensive impacts on the environment and ecosystem functions. It affects more human lives through its effects on the economy and society. Recent efforts in modeling land use and land cover changes have been dominated by the cellular automata (CA) approach (e.g., Qi 1994; Wegener 1994; Qi et al. 1996; Landis and Zhang 1999; Jenerette and Wu 2001, Luck et al. 2001). In the CA approach, a landscape is divided into a number of grid cells. Each grid cell has a nite number of states, representing the types of land use and land cover. The change of the landscape is treated as the overall consequence of the conversion of the individual cells. At any point of time, each cell has a probability of being converted to another type of land use or land cover. The probability is a func- tion of a number of factors such as the topography, proximity to urban centers, proximity to transporta- tion network, and population density. Normally, the probability of one cell is assumed to be independent of the probability of the neighboring cells. The prob- ability values can be derived either from a set of rules or based on some statistical procedures. Examples of the former are found in Turner (1993); Qi (1994); Qi et al. (1996); Landis and Zhang (1999); Luck et al. 2001, and the latter, the statistics-based approach, was used in Pontius and Hall (1993); Clark et al. (1998). The CA approach is based on a reductionist view which assumes the whole is the sum of all consist- ing parts, and it focuses on dealing with individual cells. This approach often neglects the links among the cells and the overall patterns at greater spatial scales. The CA approach has proven to be effective when the spatial heterogeneity dominates the pattern, thus each location can be characterized by a unique vector of factors. Interactions among locations are given little or no consideration in such an approach. Despite many sussessful case in simulations in some cases, e.g., for mountainous regions in Southeast Asia (Qi et al. 1996), the CA approach is likely to fail in areas with at terrain as a dominating feature of the topography such as Americas Midwest and Eastern China. In our study of landscape transformation of the Beijing and its surrounding area, we attempted to ex- plore a holistic approach that focuses on the overall patterns of the landscape and on the spatial relation- ships among the landscape components of same or different levels in spatial scale. We did so because the at terrain of the region makes hard to characterize and explain the formation and change of the urban landscape based on the differences among locations as in the CA approach. We have observed in Beijing that more than 96% of the urban expansion occurred on land with slope less than 5 deg and elevation less than 100 m in the study period from 1975 to 1997. In spite of the lack of spatial heterogeneity in topography, the urbanization is anisotropic: the northward urban expansion was sev- eral times greater than the southward. This can hardly be explained by the differences in the local properties of the two directions. Thus, the CA approach which focuses on the local differences is inadequate. It is necessary to introduce alternative approaches that con- sider the global properties and the interrelationships and interactions among the localities. We use the hierarchical regional space (HRS) model developed by Skinner and associates (Skinner 1977, 1994; Skinner et al. 2000). HRS treats a region as a whole in which interacting regional components and elements are arranged in a hierarchical structure with each component further divisible into lower level in organization. Human settlement centers serves as the nodes of the hierarchy. This model recognizes rst the macroscale connections among the spatial ele- ments. It helps to characterize the large-scale patterns. This model was developed in study of the geographical structure of human settlement centers and economic activities (see also Woldenberg 1971; Wilson 1977), but it coincides with many of the recent development in theoretical and landscape ecology (e.g., Wu and Locks 1995; Ahl and Allen 1996; Wu and David 2002). The expansion of Beijing has resulted in much greater dependence and inuence of the city on its peripheral areas. Vegetable supply is a good example. The city used to be self-sufcient in vegetable supply prior to 1980s, but now more than half of the sup- ply depends on the supply from Hebei, Shandong and other nearby provinces. In the HRS model, the intensively constructed urban area is recognized as the urban core, and the surrounding areas are treated as the cores periphery. Thus urban core is much larger in space than the tradi- tional central business district (CBD). The boundaries of the periphery is broadly dened by the limit which the core inuences can reach. We realize that den- 377 ition is subject to debate, but it does not affect our analysis in this study. The rapid urbanization has occurred with, and as a result of, the over-intensied interactions between the urban core and its peripheral areas. On the one hand, the city core acts like a socioeconomic mag- net which absorbs the human and natural resources from the periphery, forming a constant and signicant uxes of material, energy and population between the core and its periphery; on the other hand, the urban cores inuences radiate onto the peripheral areas and are agents for transformation in landscape patterns and functions in those areas. These dynamic interactions between the core and periphery are key to understand- ing and predicting the changes of urban landscapes. In this study, we characterize these changes of the urban landscape of Beijing for the period of a quarter cen- tury through applying the Hierarchical Regional Space (HRS) model and landscape ecology theories, based on the Landsat data and GIS. We will showthat HRS is a useful alternative to the CA model for characterizing and modeling complex, dynamics landscapes and their changes. Data and method The site of study Beijing, the capital city of China, forms the core of one of the largest metropolitan regions in the country (Figure 1). The municipality is located at 39
56
N and 116
20
E, covers an area of 16,808 km
2 . Of which two third are mountainous areas encircling the west- ern, northern and eastern sides of the city. The center is 43.71 m above sea level and the main rivers include Yongding, Chaobai and north canal. Beijing lies in the temperate zone. Within 50 km north and west of the city, the Taihang and Jundu mountains, straddled by the famed Great Wall, rise to heights of 2,300 m. Beijings history as a capital city dates as far back as Chinas Warring States period (484-221 B.C.); most signicantly, it was the center of the Mongols east Asian empire at the time of Marco Polo (c. 1285) and was the capital of the Ming and Qing dynasties (13681643 and 16441911). At the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, the city was again made the national capital. Beijing has seen more constant expansion over the past ve decades than any other Chinese city. By 1975, the city has a population of 9 millions. Since then, the city has experienced rapid economic boom and urbanization. The Qing city walls were replaced with ring roads, multistory housing blocks rose over the alleys of the old city, and surrounding villages became suburbs in a conurbation with some 6.5 million residents by 2000. Beijing municipality, encompassing eight districts and ten counties as well as the central city area, reports a population of 14 million. Since the beginning of economic reforms in 1978, development of the sur- rounding countryside has been especially brisk. The plains east and south of the city are now a check- erboard of high-intensity agricultural lands and new urban areas, while nearby mountainous areas, though targets of reforestation since the 1960s, also show the effects of economic expansion. Data We used Landsat data to detect the change in spatial patterns of the land use and land cover from 1975 to 1997. The coverage of our landsat data includes 11 of a total of 18 districts or counties of which the Beijing Municipality consists. The 11 districts or counties contain the urban core of Beijing and part of peri- pheral counties. The covered area (enclosed within 39
35
52
40
22
N and 115
50
05
116
59
09
and about 4500 km
2 ) has experienced the most dra- matic urbanization in the period of study. Seven counties that are left out of the study all distribute in the outskirt of the municipality. The four periods of Landsat data are all taken for path 123 and row 32. Except the rst period (May 6, 1975) for which MSS data was used with a spatial resolution of 180180 m, TM data are used for other periods (October 2, 1984, May 6 1991 and May 16, 1997) and the spatial res- olution is 30 30 m. The four scenes were selected based on their data quality, cloud cover, and time of the year. All data were processed at the Institute of Resource Science of Beijing Normal University. Shi et al. (2001) provided details on data processing. Land use and land cover classication were based on the system used by Anderson (1976). The seven types that are distinguished on the images include: intensive urban area, extensive urban area, water (including sh ponds), farmland, orchards, shrubs, and forest. Kappa statistics for classication are 0.71 (1975), 0.76 (1984), 0.80 (1991) and 0.82 (1997). The hierarchical regional space model HRS draws on some of the fundamental elements of modern geographical thought, including regional sys- 378 Figure 1. The area of study, with surrounding urban centers. The urban core is indicated as central city and the surrounding districts. Different levels of urban centers are also laid out. 379 tems theory (in the tradition of von Thnen), central place theory (following Christaller 1933), and dif- fusion theory (as introduced by Hgerstrand 1965). Foreshadowing regional systems theory, von Thnen (1966 [1826]) described how zones of high- to low- value economic activity ll the regions around cities. Seen as core-periphery structures, von Thnens zones can be characterized in terms of agricultural intens- ity and transport efciency. Regional systems theory subsequently conceptualized these regions as local or regional, social and economic systems, centered at urban nodes and nested in a more or less integrated hierarchy. This led in 1925 to E. W. Burgesss con- centric growth model that modeled city expansion in terms of concentric circles of high- to low-value urban activities. In the 1930s and1940s geographer Walter Christaller and economist August Lsch put forth versions of central place theory that became fundamental texts of urban geography. For agrarian societies, Christallers (1933) central place theory predicts the emergence of a hierarchy of settlements, with each level of the hierarchy providing distinctive services and attain- ing corresponding levels of development. Individuals on the landscape orient their economic activities to specic central places at each hierarchical level in accordance with the services provided there: to a nearby market town for items of daily use, to central towns for cooking utensils, to cities for fashionable clothes, and to metropolises for specialized services such as higher education. It follows that the hierarch- ical levels providing less common services require a correspondingly wider hinterland, and that for reas- ons of transportation efciency the hinterlands at each level become nested. Economic activities in this hier- archy develop hand in hand with a web of social networks, making a central place analysis a useful starting point for an investigation of social patterns. Anthropologist G. William Skinner rst applied a central place analysis to understanding the spa- tial structure of rural Chinese society at the local level, nding evidence for the trafc and market variants of Christallers central place theory (Skin- ner 196465, Crissman 1976, p.204). In subsequent work, Skinner traced Chinas central place hierarchy up to its highest levels, proposing that the agrarian portion of China (excluding the pastoral regions of Tibet and Inner Asia) could best be analyzed in terms of nine macroregions (Skinner 1976). Each of these macroregions makes up a more or less integrated eco- nomic system within Chinas national economy, much as the comparably populous nations of France, Ger- many, and others function as more or less integrated economic systems within Europes continental eco- nomy. Skinners regionalization of China has been highly inuential in studies of Chinese history and society (Lavely 1989; Cartier 2002) but has not been widely appreciated in elds such as economics or ecology, which have tended to rely on much more simplistic spatial characterizations (such as bifurcat- ing China into north and south or coastal and in- terior; see Batty 1994) or emphasizing physiographic regions rather than social regions despite the dominant role of human activity on the Chinese landscape. After a decades-long lapse, in 1980s and 1990s the Chinese government began compiling and releasing a wide range of social, economic, and environmental statistics. Skinner and associates made use of these statistics and newly available GIS technologies to construct a still more detailed spatial framework for China dubbed the Hierarchical Regional Space model. (Parallel efforts using historical data have led to the construction of HRS models for Japan and France.) The HRS model aims to make explicit the spatial relations among regions dened around human settle- ments at multiple levels in the central place hierarchy. Phenomena at a given location in the social-economic landscape must be understood in terms of that loc- ations position amidst the core-periphery structures operating at different spatial scales at each level in the hierarchy. Implemented in a geographic inform- ation system, the HRS model has been shown to be highly predictive of socioeconomic phenomena such as fertility, education, and occupational stratication by gender (Skinner 1994; Henderson et al. 1999; Skin- ner et al. 2000; Henderson and Ladenson 2000). In this paper we return HRS to the intellectual roots of Thnenesque regional systems theory by applying it to questions of urbanization and land use/land cover change. As applied to China, HRS theory is operationalized as a multilevel hierarchical framework for analyzing data for regional systems. Below the top hierarch- ical level, Chinas nine macroregions may be divided into central metropolitan subsystems, each oriented around one or two major metropolises. Four such sub- systems Beijing-Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Zhengzhou, and Jinan-Qingdao are found in the North China macroregion. (Figure 2 outlines the nine macrore- gions of China and the four subsystems of North China, including the region around Beijing that is the focus of this paper.) At this hierarchical level 380 Figure 2. Chinas macroregional systems in relation to provinces, showing metropolitan cities, 1990. Within the North China macroregion, four subregions are delineated with heavy dashed lines (from Skinner et al. 2000). 381 we can discern the broad core-periphery pattern of socio-economic development through an analysis of county-level statistics and household census returns. For the Beijing region these are grouped into seven core-periphery zones (see gure 3), representing the structural distance from the core to settlements within each zone, taking into account socioeconomic vari- ables and transportation costs. (Skinner et al. 2000, provides a detailed description of the analysis rep- resented by these zones. The core-periphery concept itself is widely used in urban studies; see for example Wallerstein 1991; Krugman 1991; or Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991.) In implementing the HRS model for China, Skin- ner et al. (2000) has continued below the level of regional cities to assign some 12,000 smaller cities and towns to levels in the central place hierarchy. These assignments are not simply a matter of classifying set- tlements by population size; as countless applications of the rank-size rule have shown, we can expect no hierarchical discontinuities within an ordered list of city populations below the level of the primate city, and China is no exception (Zipf 1949; Skinner 1976; Mann 1984; Marshall 1989; Reed 2002). Instead, central places are classied by the urban functions they perform for their surrounding hinterlands. In the case of China, published statistics on urban functions were used for cities in the upper levels of the hierarchy to guide the analysis; population gures play a role in the lower levels, but the breakpoints between levels necessarily vary with each local urban system. Central place analysis expects settlements at each level within the hierarchy to show a high degree of primacy with respect to the lower-level central places in their hinter- lands. Thus the delineation of regional systems and the assignment of the central places therein to hierarchical levels follows a top-down approach as advocated by Marshall (1989), identifying the primate settlement at each level and its dependent nodes at the next lower level, ultimately revealing the urban hierarchy from metropolis to market town. Figure 3 depicts the urban hierarchy in the imme- diate vicinity of our Beijing study area and outlines the boundaries of regional city systems, a middle hierarch- ical level in the HRS model. Each regional city (there are some 272 in all of China; Skinner et al. 2000, p.619) serves as the economic and social hub of these systems. And, with patterns analogous to those seen at the macroregional level, regional city systems are ex- pected to exhibit their own core-periphery structures. These assignments, along with administrative ranks assigned by the Chinese government, have been used to characterize every location in China along an urban- rural continuum; this dimension of the HRS model aims to approximate the core-periphery structures of lower-order urban centers and their immediate hinter- lands. Thus the HRS model allows us to contextualize any settlement in agrarian China by its position within both high-level and meso-level core-periphery struc- tures: by its core-periphery zone and by its urban-rural continuum category. For this study of urban expansion, the space between settlements is modeled by interpolating the core-periphery zone assignments between mapped set- tlements, and by extending the urban-rural continuum categories outward along transportation routes using the distance-decay function common to gravity mod- els. The key model variables, then, account for the structural distance from a given point to the urban nodes at different levels in the urban hierarchy, as well as the transportation distance to the nearest settlement of any level. Results and analyses The results of classication of land use and land cover of 1975, 1984, 1991, and 1997 are mapped in Figure 4. Six types of land use/ land cover are identied in the map, with intensive and extensive urban area lumped together. Maps of changes in urbanization are shown in Figure 5. In this section, we will discuss the changes in land use and land cover, in spatial patterns, and in urban functions. Changes in land use and land cover Table 1 summarizes the change in land use and land cover in the study area of a total of 4500 km 2 . The values in each rowrepresent the percentages of each of the seven land use/cover types in the study area for one point in time. The table shows that ve types of land increased in their areas while two types decreased. Among the gaining side, urban expansion is the most signicant. Putting together both urban land types, we see that 14% (or 630 km 2 ) of the land in the study area was converted to urban use in the 22-year period from 1975 to 1997. As a result, the urban area more than doubled during the period. Water surface, orchards, and forest cover also had signicant growth. On the losing side, farmland lost about one third of its area in 1975. The lost land, about 945 km2, was mostly 382 Figure 3. Core-periphery structure of the North China macroregion, showing high-order cities and major transportation network, 1990. The level of shade (gray) indicate the gradient from core to periphery. See 2.3. for description how the gradient is dened and delineated. 383 Figure 4. Land use and land cover classied from Landsat MSS and TM data, (a). 1975; (b) 1984; (c) 1991; and (d) 1997. Intensive and extensive urban areas are combined. used for urban expansion and aquaculture. Shrubs and grassland had a signicant loss to reforestation, mostly in the mountainous areas where the natural vegetation prior to timber harvest was temperate forest. Changes in spatial patterns Three major changes in spatial pattern have been ob- served: (1) the expansion of the urban core, (2) the formation of secondary urban centers, and (3) the fragmentation of the landscape. First, the expansion of the urban is obvious from the maps from 1975 through 1997 in Figures 4 and 5. Most of the expanded urban areas took place around the edges of the existing urban area, mostly through nibbling the farmland around the city. The core expansion was accompanied by the mergence of sec- ondary urban clusters. For example, on the map of 1975, a dumb bell-like band of urban area in the west and southwest of the city was well recognizable. The west cluster, labeled with circle and number 1 in Fig- ure 4, was where a major state-owned steel plant, the Capital Steel, was located; and the southwest cluster is a suburban town called Fengtai which was a major hub of freight trains. Over the years, these clusters grew fast enough, and quickly merged with the main urban core. By 1991, the farmland between the dumb-bell band and the urban core was hardly recognizable and continued to grow through 1997. The second feature is the formation of second- ary urban centers, or secondary central places in Christallers (1933) terminology. There are largely two types of secondary urban clusters around the core of Beijing: the capital towns of the counties and the in- dustrial buildups of large, and usually state-owned, enterprises. In addition to the two clusters mentioned 384 Table 1. The fraction of land use/cover types in four points in time. Intensive Extensive Water Crops Orchards Shrubs/ Forest Urban Urban Grass 1975 1.29 4.68 1.19 66.66 6.03 16.04 4.10 1984 1.53 10.86 2.28 60.29 7.09 12.31 5.64 1991 2.19 12.45 4.44 54.41 7.56 12.06 6.90 1997 6.44 13.54 7.39 45.66 8.68 10.13 8.16 in the last paragraph, we marked eight other second- ary urban clusters which could be barely recognized in the 1975 map. These clusters were seeds to grow. By 1984, all marked clusters had signicant growth in area, and clusters 1 and 2 merged with each other. By 1991, clusters 1, 2 and 3 were essentially in- tegrated with the urban core due to their respective expansion. Other marked clusters grew to become sig- nicant urban centers. The formation and growth of the secondary urban centers markedly changed the pattern of the landscape. The third feature of the landscape change is char- acterized by the increased fragmentation. Shi et al. (2001) calculated both landscape diversity index and fragmentation index. The diversity index increased from 0.49 in 1975 to 0.70 in 1997 for the study area. Meanwhile, the fragmentation index increased from 0.71 to 0.81. Important differences in fragmentation exist between the at areas (about 80% of the total area of study) and the mountainous area (20%). For the plains, the diversity index increased from 0.38 to 0.56, while the fragmentation index from 0.73 to 0.90. For the mountainous area, the diversity index varied in the range from 0.52 to 0.56, but the fragmentation index decreased from 0.93 to 0.56. The change in fragmentation indicates the effect of land use and land cover change on the overall pattern of the landscape. The plains were severely impacted by urban expansion which resulted in in- crease in fragmentation, while the mountains were reforested with young trees, leading to decrease in fragmentation of the landscape. This agrees to gen- eral observation that urban expansion and intensied transportation network tend to increase the landscape heterogeneity, while the reforestation homogenizes the vegetation cover of the mountains. In fact, 99% of the urban expansion took place on areas with slope less than 5 deg, and more 96% of the urbanization on areas with elevation less than 100 m (Shi et al. 2001). The fact that most urbanization took place on relatively homogeneous areas makes it difcult for the CA ap- proach using topography as a major driver the change in land use / land cover. Increased core-periphery interactions: The example of vegetable supply The changes of urban functions are closely related to the transformation of the landscape patterns as a consequence of urbanization. The urbanization of the Beijing area showed that the patterns and functions co-evolve with each other. These changes together res- ulted in functional integration of the core and the sur- rounding areas. More profoundly, the changes helped to convert the areas surrounding the municipality to functionally integral parts of the urban hierarchy. As a result, the urban core of Beijing has increased its inuence over the expanded periphery. The surround- ing areas which otherwise used to be little impacted by the municipality have now become integrated in economic, social and ecological functions with the municipality. On the other hand, the dependence of the urban core on the newly expanded periphery has increased. This dynamics of evolving core-periphery interactions is important in understanding and mod- eling the change of landscape patterns. We use the vegetable supply as an example to demonstrate this important feature in urban function dynamics. Fresh vegetable has become perhaps the largest foodstuff consumed by the urban population. This has to do with the diet structure of the Chinese people who, in general, consume much less meat as com- pared to the people in the Western countries. Cities themselves do not produce vegetables, and vegetable supply to the cities depends largely on the nearby rural areas. However, municipalities which include rural areas surrounding the urban cores had great capacity for vegetable supply (Skinner 1978). In 1975, Beijing achieved self-sufciency in vegetable supply, with about 90% of its consumption of vegetables produced 385 in the suburban and rural areas of the municipality. But self-sufciency declined to less than 60% by 1996 (Qiao et al. 1998). As the city increasingly expands to occupy the land that previously used for vegetable production, ve- getable supply relies more on the land farther away from the urban core. For example, a sharp decline in land area for vegetable production in the immedi- ate proximity of the city occurred from 11,300 ha in 1984 to 6700 ha in 1996, a 41% decline in 12 years. However, in the rural area farther away from the city, the vegetable land increased from 8700 ha in 1984 to 43,000 ha in 1996, a three-times increase in a 14 year period (Qiao et al. 1998). As the frontiers of ve- getable land are pushed further away from the urban center, the production efciency also declines. First, the land taken by urban expansion is more fertile than the land farther away fromthe city, because it has been improved over years and decades for vegetable pro- duction. Night soil from the city was a major source of fertilizer (Skinner 1978). Second, many skilled vegetable farmers are likely to abandon their old pro- fession and seek employment in the city, nowthat their land and themselves are urbanized. Third, production and transportation cost are usually higher in the near outskirt. When the municipality reaches its capacity for ve- getable production, the decit in vegetable supply has to be supplemented by regions beyond the boundary of the municipality. Qiao et al. (1998) cited that more than 40% of the vegetable was supplied by the nearby provinces, mostly Hebei and Shandong (see Figures 2 and 3). Assuming a per capita consumption of 500 g of fresh vegetable per day, we calculated the annual de- mand of vegetable by the Beijing municipality. Using these values and the statistics of vegetable produc- tion from Beijing Statistics Bureau, we found that the self-sufciency in vegetable supply by the municip- ality was between 10% and 18% in year 2000. In other words, more than 80% of vegetables had to be supplied by other provinces. In fact, by mid-1980s it became a daily (or nightly, to be accurate) routine that truckloads of vegetables were transported to the major markets in Beijing from the provinces of Hebei and Shandong. In these adjacent provinces where agri- cultural production has historically focused on grains, major shift in land use quietly, but swiftly, took place toward more and more production in vegetable and fruits. Vegetable production began to replace grain production to be the main source of income and the rst place in land use. By late 1980s, major feature Figure 5. Land use and land cover change in three periods, showing the expansion of urban core. 386 in the rural landscape in these regions was plastic covered greenhouses surrounding the rural villages. The rapid urban expansion in Beijing area was closely coupled with the widespread reallocation of land from grain production to vegetable and fruit production in the neighboring Hebei and Shandong Provinces. The regional expansion of vegetable supply de- veloped with formation and growth of specialized vegetable production zones. In Shandong Province alone, several counties developed their specialized zones for vegetable production. Counties in Liaocheng Prefecture, 250 km from Beijing, became special- ized in vegetable production by late 1980s. Similarly, Shouguang County has become the largest vegetable production base in China. This county alone sup- plied 20% of all vegetable consumption of the city of Beijing in 1990s. Lowered cost of transportation has been an im- portant factor. For example, Suning county of Hebei Province is 220 km south of Beijing. It used to take 6 h to travel to Beijing by bus ten years ago. Now the travel time is cut by half due to the improvement of roads and means of transportation. In this relatively small county where vegetable production used to be for households self-consumption, 25% of the arable land is now allocated for vegetable production, mainly to be transported Beijing (Suning Statistics Summary 2000). In effect, at least part of each of the provinces surrounding Beijing has become well integrated in function with the Beijing metropolis. Discussion Land classication and measures of landscape measures We were able to identify seven types of land use and land cover. It is possible to make more detailed clas- sication, particularly using LANDSAT TM data, but the seven types are adequate for our purpose in this study. Rather than accurately quantifying each land type, we focused on characterizing the change of the spatial patterns and functions of the urban landscape of Beijing and on uncovering the evolving interac- tions between the urban core and its periphery that accompanied the changes of landscape patterns. Due to the lack of TM data for 1975, we used MSS data instead. The difference in spatial resolution (30 m for TMvs. 180 mfor MSS) would inevitably introduce errors in both land classication and in calculation of measures of landscape structure (Qi and Wu 1996; Wu et al. 2002). It is likely that the resulted errors do not obscure the overall trend in landscape structures from 1975 to 1984. This was a period when great changes in landscape patterns took place. The diversity index is generally not a good choice to indicate the fragmentation of landscapes. We used it in combination with fragmentation index calculated in Shi et al. 2001. The core-periphery interactions and transformation of urban landscape More than two decades of urban development not only has transformed the landscape of the municipality of Beijing, but also changed the overall landscape in the peripheral regions. The extent of the periphery has expanded and the functional links between the urban core and its periphery have been tightened. The perspective of viewing the dynamics of the urbaniz- ing landscape as an evolving process of interactions between the urban core and periphery has import- ant implications for modeling the landscape changes. The urbanization process in Beijing region can be viewed largely as process of core-periphery interac- tions, while the characteristics of specic locations has played minor role in affecting land use and land cover change. The changes of spatial patterns at large scale are closely linked to the spatial interactions between the different levels in the urban-rural continuum in the core-periphery zone. For this particular case of Beijing, topography, which is usually an important driver for land use and land cover change, has doubt- lessly played a minor role, because of its lack of heterogeneity in the region. No other single or mul- tiple factors, physical or socio-economic variables, seemed to have major inuence on the landscape trans- formation in the region during the period under study. Therefore, as an alternative, the HRS approach serves as a complement to the CA approach. The use of the HRS model We noted that both HRS model and its predecessor, the central place theory, were developed for under- standing the regional structure of agrarian societies. In our case, the Beijing municipality and the sur- rounding region are one of the most industrialized regions in China. Yet HRS still works as a qualitat- ive theory, as demonstrated in Skinner et al. (2000), in explaining the social-economic structures of the 387 lower Yangtze River basin. This has potential to be- come a quantitative model of landscape dynamics of the region. However, this model will have to include Tianjin, another major metropolitan entity of the same macroregion (see Figure 2). 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