Hui Tang

As key repositories of regional cultural heritage and important carriers of rural revitalization, traditional villages require scientific spatial planning and adaptive conservation. This study examines 4736 traditional villages across 11 provincial-level jurisdictions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), using 10 km × 10 km geographic grids and integrating GIS spatial analysis, the Geodetector model and the MGWR model to unpack their spatial distribution patterns and driving determinants. The results indicate that the spatial distribution of traditional villages in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is uneven, and they are mainly agglomerated in the low‑mountain hilly area at the junction of Guizhou‑Hunan‑Chongqing‑Hubei and the mountain‑hilly zone on the Anhui‑Zhejiang border. Their distribution is jointly driven by natural background, socioeconomic and historical‑cultural factors. Natural terrain and climatic conditions form the fundamental constraint across the whole region, while socioeconomic factors have no uniform regional driving pattern. By contrast, ethnic‑humanistic factors show prominent local empowering effects. The MGWR results indicate that the influence of cultural relic density on the spatial distribution of traditional villages exhibits strong spatial heterogeneity across the upper, middle and lower reaches. This study provides empirical support and decision-making insights for targeted conservation, living heritage stewardship, and differentiated planning of traditional villages in the YREB.

The equitable allocation of health resources is fundamental to building healthy cities and advancing sustainable regional development. Using panel data for 122 county-level units in Hunan Province, China, from 2011 to 2022, this study constructs an evaluation index system for healthcare resource allocation and applies trend surface analysis, spatial autocorrelation, the Dagum Gini coefficient, and geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) to examine the spatiotemporal evolution, equity, and driving factors of health resource allocation. The results show the following. (1) The level of health resource allocation in Hunan Province rose steadily, with the composite score increasing by 74%, yet a persistent spatial pattern of higher allocation in the east and north than in the west and south remained; hot spots clustered in Changsha, while cold spots concentrated in parts of Southern Hunan and Western Hunan. (2) Regional disparities narrowed gradually, and the Dagum decomposition identified transvariation density as the dominant source of inequality, with an average contribution of 53.58%, exceeding intra-group and inter-group differences. (3) The effects of the drivers exhibited marked spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Per capita GDP promoted health resource allocation mainly in developed regions, while urbanization exerted stronger positive effects in less-developed regions. The positive effect of per capita disposable income gradually shifted from less-developed to developed regions over time, and population density generally showed a positive effect, with stronger influences concentrated in the Greater Western Hunan region. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how regional disparities and heterogeneous driving mechanisms shape health resource allocation, providing evidence for more adaptive and equitable healthcare governance.

Urban squares are the main place for older adults’ daily activities. The spatial layout of the urban square is not only related to the construction of a healthy city and the equitable distribution of public resources, but also of great significance in enhancing the sense of gain, security, and happiness of older adults. This essay takes “health needs of older adults” as the perspective, and constructs a multi-dimensional evaluation index system of urban square space for elderly suitability in terms of physiological, psychological, and social health. It also takes six urban squares in Yiyang city center as an example and analyzes and evaluates them using GIS network analysis and the entropy weight method. The results of the study show that (1) Yiyang city center squares show the distribution characteristics of “dense in the middle and scattered around”, and the spatial distribution is not balanced, which leads to a small service area. (2) The overall intervention value of urban square space is mainly distributed between 0.291 and 0.710, with an average value of 0.481, and the overall intervention effect of the square is good. The reasons for differences in health interventions for older adults in urban square spaces centered on six aspects: the quality of the square space, the variety and convenience of travel lines, the tidiness of the environment, physical activities, safety, and social interaction. Based on this, this essay proposes three optimization strategies for the renewal of urban squares, the construction of characteristic squares, and the reconstruction of the urban square space system. The aim is to provide a reference for the future design and renewal of the elderly suitability of urban squares, so as to promote the construction of a healthy city.

The World Health Organization (WHO) articulated a vision in 1986, hoping that countries around the world would actively promote the construction and development of healthy cities. In the context of China, a paradigm shift in urban development has been triggered by the deep implementation of the Healthy China Strategy and the gradual completion of the comprehensive national spatial planning. This shift emphasizes a micro-level focus, advocating a human-centered approach to urban space exploration. In this paper, the Dingwangtai Area of Changsha City is selected as a case study. A street space health evaluation index system called “5D+” is constructed from six dimensions, namely, human perception, degree of mixing, density, distance to transit, destination accessibility, and devise. This research adopts the community as the fundamental unit of analysis, employing the Entropy-weighting TOPSIS method for the computation of indicators. The results of this study show that the Dingwangtai Area exhibits relative deficiencies in the dimensions of density, devise, and destination accessibility. Specifically, at the community level, the Ma Wang Street Community and the Fanhou Street Community have scored particularly low. In response, this paper proposes targeted measures and detailed recommendations aimed at optimizing the design of the street, enhancing the human experience, enriching functional attributes, and refining the street network. The ultimate goal is to propose a Healthy Streets Evaluation Index System based on the concept of a healthy city and to explore its relationship with healthy streets so as to provide valuable insights for the development of healthy city streets.

Urban vitality is an important reflection of a city's development potential and urban quality. This study uses exploratory spatio-temporal big data such as social media check-ins to portray the spatio-temporal evolution of urban vitality at the subdistrict scale in Changsha, a city in central China, from 2013-2021, and finds that urban vitality in Changsha exhibits central agglomeration and outward circling expansion over time; and then use Geodetector and spatial regression analyses are used to explain the interactive effects and spatio-temporal heterogeneity of the spa-tial elements of subdistrict form, subdistrict function and subdistrict economy on urban vi-tality. The results show the following: (1) The subdistrict form and subdistrict function dimen-sions have a significant effect on urban vitality, and the effect of the economic dimension of the subdistrict is not significant. (2) The interaction effect of the density of entertainment and leisure facilities and the density of business office facilities in subdistrict function is the dominant factor in the change of urban vitality. (3) Under the spatio-temporal effect, land use diversity and park facility density have the strongest positive effect on urban vitality; road density and shopping facility density have the weakest effect. The study aims to provide a reference for the optimization and allocation of spatial elements of subdistricts in sustainable urban development and urban renewal, to achieve the purpose of urban vitality creation and enhancement.

Urban park green space can effectively ensure the healthy leisure resources of residents. With the central urban area of Yiyang as a case study, a comprehensive evaluation index system of the supply and demand of park green space is developed in this study from a healthy perspective. The spatial distribution, supply and demand matching and coupling coordination characteristics of park green space are revealed and used. This study suggests that (1) the park green space in the central urban area of Yiyang is unevenly distributed in space and exhibits the ‘multi-core aggregation’ characteristic. (2) Significant differences are identified in the matching level of supply and demand of park green space among the control planning units. (3) The supply–demand coupling coordination level of park green space in the central urban area of Yiyang is generally low and positively correlated with space. The cold and hot spots are located in the south and north of the study area, respectively. The optimization strategies for the rational layout of urban park green space are proposed in this study in three dimensions, including promoting the balance of supply and demand, placing a focus on the balance or services, and eliminating the imbalance of fairness.

With the rapid development of high-speed railway (HSR) transportation in China, its impact on regional spatial patterns and shaping has become increasingly significant. This study took seven urban agglomerations in the Yellow River Basin as the research object, using the 2 h HSR access time in the Yellow River Basin to comparatively analyze the differences in HSR access in the urban agglomeration in the Yellow River Basin, and using the 3 h HSR access to central cities as the background to conduct regional division and overlapping space identification through cross-regional economic links, before finally selecting the overlapping city of Changzhi for long-term space development strategic planning. The main conclusions were as follows: First, the low-value area of HSR travel time in the Yellow River Basin urban agglomerations was biased toward the center of the urban agglomerations, while the peripheral areas were relatively high-value travel traffic circles, and the HSR travel time showed a circular spatial pattern characteristic of continuous expansion from the center to the peripheral areas. Four urban agglomerations in the upper reaches of the city achieved a 2 h access pattern within the urban agglomeration, whereas three urban agglomerations in the middle and lower reaches of the city only reached the 2 h access level in the center. Second, the Yellow River Basin was divided into six community spaces using the SLPA model based on the economic linkage between the central city and other cities, which were filtered by the 3 h access time from the central city to each city for HSR travel. Three of the six communities produced overlapping spaces, i.e., Community 3 and Community 4 produced overlapping spaces containing Linfen, Community 3 and Community 5 produced overlapping spaces containing Changzhi, Handan, and Xingtai, and Community 4 and Community 5 produced overlapping spaces containing Yuncheng and Sanmenxia. Third, the overlapping space of Changzhi City was selected as a case study for a visionary strategic planning outlook. Combining the geographic location characteristics and future development opportunities of Changzhi, we can try to transform a pass-through node like Changzhi into a hub node in the future, strengthening the gateway status and expanding the hinterland. According to the results of the research and analysis, policymakers can try to implement the expansion and renovation of HSR trunk lines, break the transportation bottlenecks in less developed areas, improve the coverage of the HSR network, and establish a “cross-urban agglomeration” cooperation and coordination mechanism.

With the gradual networking of inter-city relations and the increase in acute impact and chronic stress, the measurement of the resilience of urban network structures is particularly prominent. Based on the construction of the urban network by passenger train trips in the Yellow River Basin, this paper analyzes and assesses the characteristics of the structural resilience of the urban network, and probes into the network resilience and urban response under the circumstances of node failure and line failure in Zhengzhou. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The urban network in the Yellow River Basin was clearly hierarchical, with a significant spatial distribution of “low in the north and high in the south”, and the overall characteristics of “robustness” in small areas and “fragility” in large areas. The network connection forms were diversified and open. The network transmission efficiency was high, and the edge cities depended on the core cities with prominent characteristics, and the risk load of regional core cities rose. (2) The network structure was “robust” as it maintained high operational efficiency and connectivity under random attacks. Under deliberate attacks, the city network operated efficiently with a small increase in connectivity before the 60% threshold, and after the threshold, the overall network started to split into many sub-networks, and the network fragmentation gradually increased until the network collapsed. (3) Zhengzhou node failure and line failure states in the Yellow River Basin urban network were resilient, in the sense that when suffering important nodes and lines going down it could still maintain good network operation efficiency, and the core nodes in the impact of natural disasters could adapt to the destructive nature of the network through the urban network structure self-regulation.

Promoting the coordinated development of population health and the economy is an important part of building a “Healthy China” and promoting high-quality economic development. Based on the systematic construction of the population health and economic development evaluation index system, this paper uses the coupled coordination model, geodetector, and geographically weighted regression (GWR) to comprehensively measure the population health level and economic development level at the provincial scale in China in 2000 and 2015, and reveals the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of the coupled coordination relationship between the population health level and economic development level at the provincial scale in China from 2000 to 2015 and its driving factors. The results show the following: (1) China’s population health and economic development are in a high-level coupling stage, and the coupling level increases slightly with time; spatially, two types of running-in coupling and high-level coupling coexist; the coupling degree in the eastern and central regions tends to increase, while the coupling degree in the western region tends to weaken. (2) China’s population health and economic development are in a good coupling coordination stage as a whole, and the coupling coordination degree has an increasing trend; spatially, the coupling coordination degree shows high spatial differentiation characteristics in the east and low in the west; the good and high-quality coupling coordination type area tends to expand to the west, while the moderate coupling coordination type area tends to shrink to the west; there is also positive spatial agglomeration of coupling coordination degree, and the spatial agglomeration is gradually enhanced. (3) The coupling coordination of China’s population health and economic development is driven by multiple factors such as natural conditions, health resources, culture quality, and urbanization level; the interaction between factors is stronger than that of a single factor, and the driving effect of each factor also shows significant spatial heterogeneity. This study is intended to provide a scientific basis for promoting harmonious population health and economic development.