Air Quality and the Spatial-Temporal Differentiation of Mechanisms Underlying Chinese Urban Human Settlements

Abstract

Urban air has its typical structural characteristics. With the continuous optimization of urban human settlement indicators, the key issue and single system of “air quality” in urban human settlements needs to be further discussed. Based on air conditions, this paper attempts to visually measure the spatial-temporal distribution of human settlements in 283 prefecture-level cities in China using ArcGIS and Matlab and tries to reveal the influencing mechanisms: (1) There is no significant difference between the average of the comprehensive score of human settlements in 6 years. The overall level of those in all cities decreases from 0.6581 to 0.6004 year by year, and the average level order in the seven regions of China is Southern China (0.7310) > Southwest China (0.6608) > East China (0.6515) > Northeast China (0.6496) > Northwest China (0.6049)> Central China (0.5901) > North China (0.5565). (2) The global Moran’s I index of China’s human settlements is between 0.3750–0.7345, showing a positive spatial correlation, and the comprehensive development level has the characteristics of local spatial convergence of low-value clusters in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and high-value clusters in the south coast and Heilongjiang Province. (3) The spatial econometric model tests the influencing mechanism. There is a significant spatial positive correlation between science and technology investment in each city. The urbanization rate, the degree of advanced industrial structure, and the urban average elevation have a certain spatial spillover, showing a negative correlation. Science and technology investment and the degree of advanced industrial structure have the greatest impact.

Keywords

• air quality
• human settlements
• spatial-temporal differentiation
• spatial econometric models
• China’s prefecture-level city