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| ACCESSIBILITY OF SMALL TOWNS AND ITS RELATION TO SPATIAL PATTERNS OF RURAL SETTLEMENTS: A CASE STUDY OF 93 SMALL TOWNS IN JINGZHOU |
| SONG Ming-jie, WANG Hong-zhi, SHAO Qi-hui, LUO Jing, ZHOU Yong |
| College of Urban & Environmental Sciences, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China |
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Abstract Referring to Potential Model, combing small town's accessibility to county economic centers and small town's accessibility to nearby rural settlements, an integrated accessibility model of small towns was built. Using this model, values of integrated accessibility index of 93 small towns in Jingzhou were calculated in this paper. Small town's accessibility was classified into 5 levels-excellent(>80), superior(60-80), medium(40-60), inferior(20-40) and poor(<20) according to the values of the integrated accessibility index. Based on the correlation analyses between small town's integrated accessibility and rural settlement landscape indexes in small town's nearby allocation area, as well as the comparison of the average values of rural settlement landscape indexes in the nearby allocation areas of small towns with different accessibility levels, this paper also studied the relations between small town's accessibility and rural settlement distribution. The results are as follows:small town's integrated accessibility shows significantly positive correlation to the total area of rural settlements, the average area of rural settlements and the area percentage of rural settlements in the landscape, but it doesn't show significant correlation to the number of rural settlements and the density of rural settlements in the nearby allocation area; small towns with excellent accessibility are more likely to attract large numbers of settlements with larger scales distributing around them. However, small town's accessibility is not the only factor that influences rural settlement distribution. Small towns graded with inferior or poor accessibility but with large quantity of fertile arable land or water resources still attract moderate numbers of rural settlements with medium scale distributing nearby.
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Received: 20 September 2012
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2013, Vol. 28 
