Shenzhen has rapidly grown into a megacity in the recent decades. It is a challenging task for the Shenzhen government to provide sufficient healthcare services. The spatial configuration of healthcare services can influence the convenience for the consumers to obtain healthcare services. Spatial accessibility has been widely adopted as a scientific measurement for evaluating the rationality of the spatial configuration of healthcare services. The multi-modal two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method is an important advance in the field of healthcare accessibility modelling, which enables the simultaneous assessment of spatial accessibility via multiple transport modes. This study further develops the multi-modal 2SFCA method by introducing online map APIs to improve the estimation of travel time by public transit or by car respectively. As the results show, the distribution of healthcare accessibility by multi-modal 2SFCA shows significant spatial disparity. Moreover, by dividing the multi-modal accessibility into car-mode and transit-mode accessibility, this study discovers that the transit-mode subgroup is disadvantaged in the competition for healthcare services with the car-mode subgroup. The disparity in transit-mode accessibility is the main reason of the uneven pattern of healthcare accessibility in Shenzhen. The findings suggest improving the public transit conditions for accessing healthcare services to reduce the disparity of healthcare accessibility. More healthcare services should be allocated in the eastern and western Shenzhen, especially sub-districts in Dapeng District and western Bao’an District. As these findings cannot be drawn by the traditional single-modal 2SFCA method, the advantage of the multi-modal 2SFCA method is significant to both healthcare studies and healthcare system planning.

The two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method, which is one of the most widely used methods for measuring healthcare spatial accessibility, defines the catchment area of each facility as the area within a certain distance from the facility. However, in some cases, the service utilization behavior is constrained by administrative boundaries, therefore the definition of catchment area within a certain distance may be inappropriate. In this study, we aim to propose a modification of the 2SFCA method for measuring spatial accessibility to healthcare services in a system constrained by administrative boundaries. The proposed method defines the catchment areas of healthcare facilities within certain administrative units. The method is applied in a case study of the healthcare services in Yanqing District of Beijing, China. Three types of healthcare facilities, including general hospitals, community healthcare centers and stations, are included. Based on the sensitivity analysis of the distance-decay parameter β, result of the β = 1 scenario is relatively appropriate and is utilized for further analysis. The difference between spatial accessibility with or without constraint of administrative boundary is relatively significant. The results of the proposed model show that the village-level spatial accessibility to healthcare services shows a significant disparity, and the uneven distribution of general hospitals is the main cause. The constraint of administrative boundary has a significant impact on healthcare accessibility, which verifies the validity of the modification proposed by this study in empirical studies. The empirical results also lead to policy recommendations to improve healthcare equity in the study area. At the town-level, the improvement of equity in healthcare accessibility could be achieved in two ways. First, the sizes of community healthcare centers in towns with small accessibility scores should be expanded. Second, new general hospitals can be built in the eastern part of Yanqing District. Within each town, to improve the equity in healthcare accessibility, community healthcare stations should be expanded or newly built in the periphery villages.

As a response to the global economic crisis of 2008, the Chinese government has started to focus on domestic demand as one of the key national development strategies. New extended metropolitan regions (EMRs) in inland China are being designated as major platforms to promote domestic demand. Within the context of this new global economic environment and Chinese national policy, these EMRs might not share the same spatial characteristics and processes in the course of their growth and development as those in coastal areas. Using the Changzhutan (CZT) region as an example and comparing it to EMRs in coastal China, the article argues that a new type of urbanisation has been developing in China since 2000, a new region-based urbanisation driven by the combined forces of domestic demand and globalisation. Classified as a new category of EMR, (EMR II), these newly emerging EMRs in inland China are characterised as having domestic investment and demand as key drivers. Other characteristics are the ‘backflow’ of l...

In the rapidly growing literature on exploring urban restructuring in reference to the state rescaling, many authors have neglected the relatively fixed and immobile forms of territorial organization. The development of China’s National New Areas (NNAs) provides an opportunity to explore the hybrid and multiscalar processes of state rescaling. From the perspective of rescaling, an analytical framework was established to examine the practice of NNAs and their governance rescaling in China. Every National New Area (NNA) is the result of China’s “state spatial selectivity”, and the central government has guided policies to a specific spatial scale to cope with the development crisis. The rescaling of NNA governance is the process of the functioning of all-level administrative subjects in the functional orientation, spatial zoning, administrative system, and power allocation through rigid or flexible means. In practice, there are significant governance scale differences in territorial spatial organization, administrative systems, and power distribution among the various NNAs, which has led to diverse governance modes. The degree of coupling between the scale of new and existing administrative divisions is the key to the rescaling of NNA governance. Most NNAs are still facing the challenge of unifying their territorial development logic. Discussions of state rescaling in western countries have focused on the super-local level. The case of China clearly shows the role of local embeddedness and diversification in rescaling.

Improving the space arrangement of innovative industry is an important issue and regional characteristics must be taken into account during the making of urban planning. Differ from western planning which has a weak intervention on physical space, Chinese planning always tends to use strong intervention on physical space arrangement. However, Chinese planning technique has been changing from rigid to resilient. The spatial planning of innovative industry is also transforming due to the challenges. Shenzhen is the innovative polar and planning pioneer in China. This research discusses the evolution of the spatial layout planning of innovation industry in Shenzhen, clarifies specific forms and coupling mechanism of rigidity and flexibility in resilient control, establishes a resilient planning theory framework that is composed of structure resilience, control resilience and process resilience, aiming to further explore the logic behind industry transformation and the mechanism of planning intervention.