Abstract The Yangtze River Delta Area is the region with the most developed economy and the heaviest density of city in our country. It boasts graceful tourist resources, which makes it the ideal destination for developing tourism. However, because the region is made up one city and two provinces, which make the development level of its cities is not balanced, and its urban spatial structure of the form of asymmetric "Z" resulted in the system of urban structure loosing and even determined the structure of tourism resources relied on the development of its cities was loose. Thus, the paper discussed how to rationally dispose tourism resources of the Yangtze River Delta area in order to promote its regional tourism development and play a demonstrating role for China's regional tourism development in the new century.
First, by analyzing the structure of tourism resources, tourism market and tourist behavior in this region, it was given three principles of disposing tourism resources:① regarding Shanghai as the center. ②regarding the network of highway as frames. ③ maximizing the pursuing of the tourism benefit.
Then, the tourism resources of the region were disposed in three pieces of tourism circle in the range of 300km regarding Shanghai as the center. The range of the circle from 0 km to 50 km was called the lifestyle of the modern metropolis tourist circuit, and that from 50km to 150km was the tourist circle with the local conditions and customs of rivers and lakes of the South and the urban gardens landscape, that from 150km to 300km the tourist circuit about the culture of history and the lifestyle of mountains and rivers.
2004, Vol. 19 
