The spatial pattern and governance of Zhongyuan Urban-Rural System in its development trajectory

It remains unclear on how transportation network interacts with economic network in an urban-rural agglomeration, while such knowledge is crucial for urban-rural system governance and sustainability. We explored such spatial interactions in the Zhongyuan Urban-Rural Agglomeration (ZURA) from 1995 to 2015. The structure of transportation network was measured by spatial syntax model, and that of economic network was gauged by improved gravity model. The associations between transportation and economic networks were investigated by conducting bivariate spatial autocorrelation analysis. The global Moran’s I showed that the two networks were positively correlated from 1995 to 2015. The local Moran’s I identified “high-high” associations between transportation and economic networks around core cities in 1995, which further extended to surrounding cities. Our results reveal that peripheral cities with highly developed transportation system have little spatial economic impact on neighboring rural areas, while cities with low transportation accessibility restrained its external economic influence of neighboring cities and rural areas. Our findings shed light on future urban-rural system governance, where the “multi-center, unbalanced” growth patterns of economic network and the “multi-core, multi-directional” structure of transportation network are more likely to contribute to the sustainability of urban-rural systems.