Classification and Economic Development Track of Coal Mining Cities in China
中国煤炭城市分类及其经济运行轨迹分析

This paper put forward the "Three-dimension Model" classification method for coal mining cities,and described their economic development tracks through principal components analysis.Firstly,the paper divided the coal mining cities into prefecture and county levels according to the statistical standard of China;Next,based on the Three-dimension model China's coal mining cities were classified by means of SOFM artificial network;Lastly,the paper analyzed and described the economic development tracks of the two types of coal mining cities.Results showed the weight of coal industry was decreasing in its functions with the numbers of classification increasing among the prefecture and county types,but there were significant differences in the scale expansion and the location distribution,which revealed there was not corresponding relationship between the index of the coal mining cities and its numbers of classified group.Principal components analysis showed that there is a correlation between economic development and its economic sustainability,infrastructure,scale and environment in the prefecture-level coal mining cities,while correlation existing between economic development and its function,economic sustainable capacity in county-level coal mining cities.Both the expansion of city scale and the improvement of economic sustainable capacity are key factors for their development.The economic development tracks revealed that not only the tendency of economic development were different for the two types of coal mining cities,but also the total economic development levels of the classified groups were also different.Therefore,It should make different policies for the sustainable development of different coal mining cities.