Study on the evolution model, process and influence factors of the coal resource-based cities' spatial structure: A case study of Huainan city

This paper, combined with all previous information on urban planned land,dynamically tracks the Huainan's spatial- temporal evolution process of urban spatial structure with the aid of GIS software. Qualitative research shows that Huainan's urban space pattern is relatively scattered and has gradually evolved into the compact layout. Firstly, from 1960 to2009, industrial land increases from 9.37 square kilometers to 21.19 square kilometers,warehouse land from 0.69 square kilometers to 1.22 square kilometers, residential land from10.147 square kilometers to 43.572 square kilometers, and the land for commerce and public facilities from 0.96 square kilometers to 7.86 square kilometers. Therefore, the increase of industrial land, residential land, and land for commerce and public facilities is primary feature for internal space. Secondly, industrial land, mainly the coal mining industry and choosingwashing industry, is characterized by resource dependency and spatial variability, the coal power industrial land and the chemical industrial land are featured by the spatial inertia, and the land represented by food industry, textile industry and machinery manufacturing industry is significant. Thirdly, the phenomenon of internal spatial restructure has been gradually significant since the 1980 s, which contains two main forms: industrial land replaced by residential land and residential land replaced by land for commerce and public facilities.Furthermore, this paper, based on a micro perspective, focuses on the space combination relationship among the main land use patterns. Then it comes to the conclusions that the coal resource-based city can be identified into 6 types of spatial expansion mode and that the spatial expansion modes of the coal resource- based city are distinct in different life- cycle stages. In occurrence period, the urban-mine symbiotic expansion mode plays a dominant role. In growth period, it employs the pattern of driving the towns' development with factories, joining the factories and expanding along the traffic line. After mature period, the effective way to optimize the urban spatial structure is new district expansion model. Meanwhile, the self-organizing extension pattern has existed throughout the process of coal resource-based city development. Finally, this paper summarizes the external spatial form and internal spatial structure evolution mechanism of coal resourcebased city through the analysis of several major influencing factors, such as resources, natural environment, traffic condition, industry structure, urban planning and so on. The conclusions can be drawn as follows: Firstly, resource factor affects the urban industrial structure through its economic effect, and the production factor affects the urban external spatial morphology and internal spatial structure by its space effect. Secondly, natural environment factor and traffic condition factor affect the external form of the coal resource- based city. Thirdly, the intensive degree of various influencing factors is distinct in different stages of urban development.