Looking into the network structure of Chinese urban system from the perspective of air transportation
从航空运输看中国城市体系的空间网络结构

Air transportation is a unique and increasingly important perspective in studying spatial structure of urban system This paper illustrates the framework of urban system by analyzing structural features of air transportation network based on the data of the amount of airport passenger transportation and the number of weekly flights (1)Since open to the outside world, the nodes in China's air transportation network increased quickly accompanied with the expansion of air transportation network scale which presents positive correlation with the scale rank of urban system (2) On the whole, dispersion dominates the evolution of airport's spatial structure But in the variant periods and zones, the newly built airports and the increase of transportation capacity of the existing airports exert different influences on the expansion of air transportation network (3) Network linkage intensity differs in various provinces But the eastern coastal zone is still the core region of domestic and international airline linkage in which the international hub function of Beijing Tianjin Hebei and Jiangsu Shanghai is distinctive while Guangdong mainly acts as home hub (4) The capital city of a province is still of vital essence to this province's outward connection, but more and more developed cities of some provinces have partly substituted the capital cities (5) The spatial distribution of intensity and tightness of air network linkage separate from each other, which manifest that the spatial network structure of China's urban system is still in the process of dynamic evolution (6) The factors such as the change of airline structure, the airline linkage with foreign countries and the cooperation and competition of domestic airport cities will all influence urban system structure in future