Temporal and Spatial Distribution Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Industrial Heritage in China: A Case Study of the Four Batches of Industrial Heritage Lists

Abstract

With China's entry into the era of industry and information, an increasing number of industrial enterprises have withdrawn from the historical stage owing to technical bottlenecks, environmental pollution, and lack of resources. The Party and Government attach great importance to the protection, utilization, and research of industrial heritage. This study takes 164 national industrial heritage groups since 2020 published by the Ministry of Industry and Information as the research object. This paper discusses the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of national industrial heritage and analyzes its influencing factors using the spatial analysis methods of nuclear density and concentration trend evolution of the geographic information system platform. The main results of this study are as follows: 1) The spatial distribution of national industrial heritage shows remarkable positive spatial autocorrelation, and this correlation increases over time; There are more industrial heritages in the southeast and less in the northwest, and the spatial pattern of "three cores, two pairs, sheet distribution" is formed. 2) From the perspective of heritage types, light industry is mainly distributed in the Yangtze River Basin and coastal areas, while heavy industry is more dispersed. 3) The distribution of industrial heritage in the province is unbalanced, with three types of areas. Type I is in the northeast and first-tier areas, such as the southeast coastal areas in China. Type II is in third-class areas like northwest China, while the others are type III. 4) From the perspective of time evolution, the spatial distribution center of industrial heritage has four obvious turns. Before the founding of New China, the span of the Heritage Center in different periods was small, and the span became larger after that. 5) Most industries in ancient China were influenced by natural geography and the socioeconomic environment. Although the industries in modern China were influenced by the above factors, they were more influenced by historical and political factors such as nationalism, the Westernization Movement, and major national strategies. National industrial heritage is concentrated in the southeast coastal and middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River plain areas with good natural environment, high population density, high economic level and smooth information flow, while the number of distributions in Guangdong and northwestern areas is less, and areas such as Guangxi and Ningxia are even blank. On the one hand, due to the backward industrial development of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, and other provinces in the western region, only a few meet the requirements for the selection of national industrial heritage. On the other hand, "Renewal" has become the theme of the development and planning of times in the process of rapid urbanization in Guangdong Province, one of the birthplaces of modern industry in southern China. A large number of industrial heritage sites have been abandoned and demolished, and the protection and development of these sites are far backward. Therefore, each province should fully understand the importance of protecting and selecting national industrial heritage and take this as an opportunity to accelerate this process within their respective jurisdictions. Each province ought to reasonably link development and protection to better promote the organic renewal and activation of cities.

Keywords

• national industrial heritage
• socio-economic environment
• historical and cultural environment
• government policy
• china