Although there is an abundance of research on international students’ study and life experiences in the receiving countries and their post-study labour market outcomes in the sending countries, the motivations to study in a specific country have rarely been studied. Based on the theoretically grounded analysis, this article aims to explore the determinants driving Chinese students to increasingly choose UK’s postgraduate taught programmes, under the context of the third wave of international student mobility. Drawing on 41 interviews and thematic analysis, this study finds a variety of determinants: China’s intense domestic competition for the master programme entry, social networks, China’s traditional culture, short duration of master programme, global competence and parental influence. Also, the results suggest that China’s domestic master education is experiencing great changes. The findings provide implications for UK higher education institutions and Chinese students in terms of studying abroad. This study contributes to a broadened empirical and conceptual understanding of capital conversion and push-pull model under Chinese student context, offering empirical evidence for explaining the inner decision process of studying in the UK regarding students coming from China’s contemporary middle class.

Improving transportation sustainability serves as a means of reducing the perceived and real distance, thereby contributing to the city and higher education development. In this paper, the complexity of transport sustainability is measured via four different dimensions: economy, society, environment and politics. The variables are designed by the four dimensions. The higher education development is measured via the ratio of higher education degree holders, reflecting the skilled work mobility. Over the last 30 years, university students moving to cities for study and work purposes have become an important part of rural–urban transition mobility. However, few studies have explored the impacts of transportation sustainability on higher education development in China. The economic, environmental, social and political dimensions in transportation sustainability can boost China’s higher education attainment in different ways. Against this background, this study, drawing on the panel data and employing the spatial multilevel model, investigated the impacts of transportation sustainability on higher education in China, adding new empirical evidence for China’s higher education development. A panel analysis revealed that the increase in transportation sustainability induces the growth of higher education. Moreover, higher education attainment showed significant spatial dependence at the county level and had significant spatial clustering of county-level higher education attainment across provinces. Furthermore, modeled test results showed that the spatial multilevel model was more suitable for our study than traditional regression models. By identifying transport sustainability variables that have an effect on higher education, this study is the first to uncover the complexity of transportation sustainability and contributes to the latest policy implications for promoting higher education attainment through sustainable transportation.

Although the forces or impetuses that influence an urban structure are diverse, as has been fully studied by scholars from diverse research fields, some have played key roles. We endeavor to explore the key forces and mechanisms forming and transforming the urban spatial structure through Hangzhou, a multi-identity city. Upon studying classical ancient texts, historical maps, critical and recent literature, and POI data, we argue that the first and foremost driver of Hangzhou is commercial culture, rather than any other factors. Under a diachronic view and with graphic analysis, we distinguished Hangzhou’s three major transformations during the last 900 years. Each transformation was, respectively, driven by the complicated commercial culture, which was mixed up with other elementary cultures, such as civil, leisure, landscape, and industrial. Furthermore, urban heritages were formed, inherited, revitalized, and reutilized during the transformation processes, which, in turn, enriched the commercial culture and vividly reshaped Hangzhou’s urban structure.

In the context of land relocation, poverty alleviation resettlement (PAR) is considered an effective approach to improve the man–land relationship and development issues. However, current studies pay little attention to PAR and its spillover effects within developed regions. Furthermore, the complete mechanism chain has received little research concentration. Thus, employing a qualitative survey, this study aims to investigate the overall mechanisms of developed regions’ PAR in the context of land relocation. The study will deal with the following questions: Why does PAR occur in developed regions? How does the resettlement approach to poverty alleviation (i.e., paths)? What are the effects of resettlement on poverty alleviation, including its own effects and spillover effects? Through answering these questions, this study will highlight PAR in developed regions and investigate the spillovers from social, economic and ecological perspectives. Particularly, a comprehensive mechanism analysis framework for PAR will be presented to motivate future studies. Results indicate that PAR is generally caused by ecological poverty alleviation, geological disaster prevention and county town urbanisation promotion and that emigration and resettlement are the paths to PAR. In addition, the direct outcome is the overall rise in the number of resettlers over time, and the spillovers show the sustainable collaboration of economic, social and ecological dimensions. These findings will influence future land reform and housing initiatives.

The concepts of space and time have dramatically changed with the development of modern sciences, such as geometry, physics, and astronomy. This radical shift also changes every aspect of our perspectives, including those on urban space and urban planning. With a brief introduction to the evolution of geometry, this article discusses the development of the way we think about and evaluate urban space. Such development is divided into two phases: homogeneous urban space and generalized non-Euclidean urban space, each with corresponding patterns of urban planning. Some key issues in the non-Euclidean pattern of planning are then explored intensively, such as varied measurements of urban land, geodesics in the city, and urban planning in spacetime. While emphasizing the way of thinking in urban planning process, this article provides some proposals that differ from those related to absolute space.