STUDY ON THE REGIONAL ACCESSIBILITY OF URBAN AGGLOMERATIONSTUDY AGGLOMERATION IN HUNAN PROVINCE UNDER THE IMPACT OF HIGH-SPEED RAILWAY

Transportation network system has significant effect on the optimization of spatial structure of urban agglomeration. Since inauguration of the first high-speed rail, Japan's Shinkansen, extensive studies on high- speed rail's influence on urban and regional development have been done. Reviewing both domestic and international studies, we found that most scholars consent to the existence of high-speed rails' influence on urban and regional development through changing location's accessibility, movement of production factors and regional comparative advantages. With the approaching High-Speed Railway Age, Hunan urban agglomeration regional spatial structure will changes significantly. With the introduction of the concept of accessibility and the measurement factors of weighted shortest travel time of the transport network of 2011 and 2030, this paper concludes that the development of High-Speed Railway has the following effects on Hunan urban agglomeration regional spatial structure. First of all, High-Speed Railway completely enhances accessibility within Hunan urban agglomeration eight cities, greatly shortens temporal and spatial distance between cities,promotes the integrated development of the Hunan urban agglomeration eight cities and boosts formation of regional balance of the spatial structure by formation and development of metropolitan area and economic developing axis. Secondly, High- Speed Railway accelerates the formation of multi- central spatial structure, but it differently affects the accessibilities of different cities. Hunan urban agglomeration can be divided into two classes: The first class is Changde city, Yiyang city, Loudi city and Xiangtan city; the second class is Yueyang city, Zhuzhou city, Changsha city and Hengyang city. So, different cities should seize the opportunities and seek their own development strategies, according to their different characteristics under the High-Speed Railway Age.