Social Sensing of the Imbalance of Urban and Regional Development in China Through the Population Migration Network around Spring Festival

Ruoxin Zhu, Diao Lin, Yujing Wang, Michael Jendryke, Rui Xin, Jian Yang, Jianzhong Guo and Liqiu Meng
Additional contact information
Ruoxin Zhu: Chair of Cartography, Technical University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany
Diao Lin: Chair of Cartography, Technical University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany
Yujing Wang: School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Michael Jendryke: School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Rui Xin: School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Jian Yang: School of Geospatial Information, Information Engineering University, Zhengzhou 450052, China
Jianzhong Guo: College of Environment and Planning, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China
Liqiu Meng: Chair of Cartography, Technical University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 8, 1-21

Abstract: Regional development differences are a universal problem in the economic development process of countries around the world. In recent decades, China has experienced rapid urban development since the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy. However, development differs across regions, triggering the migration of laborers from underdeveloped areas to developed areas. The interaction between regional development differences and Spring Festival has formed the world’s largest cyclical migration phenomenon, Spring Festival travel. Studying the migration pattern from public spatiotemporal behavior can contribute to understanding the differences in regional development. This paper proposes a geospatial network analytical framework to quantitatively characterize the imbalance of urban/regional development based on Spring Festival travel from the perspectives of complex network science and geospatial science. Firstly, the urban development difference is explored based on the intercity population flow difference ratio, PageRank algorithm, and attractiveness index. Secondly, the community detection method and rich-club coefficient are applied to further observe the spatial interactions between cities. Finally, the regional importance index and attractiveness index are used to reveal the regional development imbalance. The methods and findings can be used for urban planning, poverty alleviation, and population studies.

Keywords: crowdsourced geographical data; Spring Festival travel; network analysis; community detection; rich-club phenomenon; regional development differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/8/3457/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/8/3457/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:8:p:3457-:d:349582

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().