The high-speed economic growth of mega city-regions in China has been characterized by rapid urbanization accompanied by a series of environmental issues ranging from widespread soil contamination to groundwater depletion. This article begins with an analysis of the interaction between urbanization and the ecological system and reviews existing frameworks for analyzing urban and ecological systems. By taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region as an example, the article introduces a conceptual framework to analyze mega city-regions and forecast possible interactions between urbanization and eco-environment by applying simulation model. The proposed framework and its components can provide guidance to identify the impacts of urbanization and external forces such as globalization on eco-environment by integrating the internal and external factors, synthesize the complex components of mega city-regions in databases, understand and diagnose the casual relationship between urban policies and ecological consequences.

The impact of built environment features on tourists’ walking behaviors has received growing attention. Although many researchers have observed the effects of micro-scale factors, the impact of culture-related factors on walking behaviors has been frequently overlooked. Therefore, it is vital to synthesize those micro-scale variables to develop a more holistic picture, and incorporating a cultural perspective is an imperative for the preservation and vitality enhancement of historic streets. In our study, a micro-scale built environment (MiBE) variable system was constructed to capture the features of historic streets, and 109 visitors were tracked in Wudaoying Hutong to record their walking-stopping behaviors. The results revealed four primary components affecting walking-stopping behaviors, among which transparency was the most influential factor, followed by the transitional space between streets and buildings, contributing to 49.8% and 21.6%, respectively. Notably, the non-negligible impact of two culture-related factors, including the contrast between Chinese and Western styles and traditional Chinese features, was also revealed, contributing to 28.6% of the total observed activities. We further compared four different types of micro-scale factors of the built environment and the corresponding walking-stopping behaviors, providing both scientific and theoretical reflections for preserving and renewing historic streets.

Urban agglomeration is an essential spatial support for the urbanization strategies of emerging economies, including China, especially in the era of mediatization. From a hybrid space perspective, this paper invites TikTok cross-city check-in records to empirically investigate the vertical and flattened distribution characteristics of check-in networks of China’s three major urban agglomerations by the hierarchical property, community scale, and node centrality. The result shows that (1) average check-in flow in the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and Pearl River Delta network decreases in descending order, forming a Z-shaped, single-point radial, and N-shaped structure, respectively. (2) All three urban agglomerations exhibit a nexus community structure with the regional high-flow cities as the core and the surrounding cities as the coordinator. (3) Geographically proximate or recreation-resource cities have a high degree of hybrid spatial accessibility, highlighting their nexus role. Finally, the article further discusses the flattened evolutionary structure of the check-in network and proposes policy recommendations for optimizing check-in networks at both the digital and geospatial levels. The study gains from the lack of network relationship perspective in the study of location-based social media and provides a novel research method and theoretical support for urban agglomeration integration in the context of urban mediatization.

The essence of post-disaster reconstruction is the restoration and rebirth of the affected areas. The earthquake hitting Jiuzhaigou was the first earthquake that had its epicenter in the World Natural Heritage located in China. Ecological restoration and landscape reconstruction are essential for the sustainable development of tourism. This study uses high-resolution remote sensing images to monitor and evaluate the post-disaster restoration and reconstruction process of the leading lakes in Jiuzhaigou. It was found that the lake water quality, vegetation, and road facilities have undergone moderate reconstruction. However, the restoration and reconstruction still faced severe challenges. The ecological environment’s stability and balance are prerequisites for the sustainable development of the World Natural Heritage sites. This paper combines the “Build Back Better” concept that advocates risk reduction, scenic spot restoration, and efficient implementation to ensure Jiuzhaigou’s restoration and sustainable development. It comes up with specific measures for the resilience development of Jiuzhaigou from the eight principles of overall planning, structural resilience, disaster prevention and mitigation, landscape facilities, social psychology, management mechanisms, policies and regulations, and monitoring and evaluation to provide a reference for the sustainable development of tourism.

Alongside the proceeding of rural land system reform in China, it becomes more and more critical to conduct policy performance evaluations on collective-owned construction land for profitable use to reflect the achievements and deficiencies of the reform. Traditionally, land policy performance evaluation is based on the theory of “policy-performance”, which fails to explain the mechanism of transaction costs. From the perspective of spatial planning, land use and the spatial form shaped by land development management and control are a representation of land property rights, as well as an expression of land policy performance. Thus, a correct understanding of the role of spatial form in the relationship between land policy and land performance is of great significance in accurately evaluating land policy performance and further improving land policies. Focusing on the interrelation among the three factors, this article highlights and elaborates on the intermediary role of spatial form between land property rights and land policy performance and puts forward the analytical framework of “land property right–spatial form–land policy performance”. It then takes the case of Wujiang District of Suzhou in southern Jiangsu Province to prove the effectiveness of this analytical framework. The outcome of this study can serve as a supplement to “policy-performance” theory, which refines and deepens the analysis of transaction costs from the perspective of spatial planning. It may also help deepen the recognition of land policy performance through visualized presentations, providing a new perspective for performance evaluation in quantitative and qualitative ways.

Rapid urbanization in China has been accompanied by spatial inefficiency in patterns of human activity, of which ‘ghost towns’ are the most visible result. In this study, we measure the density and diversity of human activity in the built environment and relate this to various explanatory factors. Using the Pearl River Delta (PRD) as an empirical case, our research demonstrates the distribution of human activity by multi-source data and then explores its dynamics within these areas. This empirical study is comprised of two parts. The first part explores location information regarding human activity in urbanized areas and shows density and diversity. Regression models are applied to explore how density and diversity are affected by urban scale, morphology and by a city’s administrative level. Results indicate that: 1) cities with smaller populations are more likely to be faced with lower density and diversity, but they derive greater marginal benefits from improving land use efficiency; 2) the compactness of the layout of urban land, an index reflecting the plane shapes of the built environment, is highly correlated with density and diversity in built-up areas; and 3) the administrative importance of a city has a significant and positive impact on the density of human activity, but no obvious influence on its diversity.