A fractal study on the northern Shaanxi urban space evolution and organization over the past two thousand years

Based on the fractal theory,the distance between towns and urban population scale measured and extracted from the historical atlas of China and the study of population geography in historical periods in Shaanxi province are the data sources. The evolution of urban space and organizational differences of Shaanxi are studied by calculating and comparing the fractal dimension of urban space from western Han, the eastern Han, Sui, Tang, Song dynasties to the Qing Dynasty. It concludes that the urban spatial organization of northern Shaanxi has fractal characteristics for two thousand years. Space scale structure grows from the first town of monopoly to systematic development. Urban agglomeration grows from the monocyte accumulation point to axis agglomeration. And urban space correlation is gradually strengthened. Northern Shaanxi urban spatial organization is the resulted from the influence of ecology, society, economy, culture and politics.