China's Transport Infrastructure Investment: Past,Present, and Future

China has been heavily investing in transportation infrastructure since the 1990s. Consequently, connectivity has been significantly improved, both within China and between China and other countries. Such large‐scale investments have been made possible by various financing mechanisms from the central government, local governments, and the private sector. Research findings generally indicate that these infrastructure investments bring economic prosperity to the country, affect the distribution of economic activities, reduce poverty to a certain extent, and promote economic integration. The future trends of connectivity changes in China and relevant policy recommendations are also discussed in this paper.     

Improving Connectivity in Indonesia: The Challenges of Better Infrastructure,Better Regulations,and Better Coordination

This paper presents and discusses the main challenges that an archipelago like Indonesia is facing in improving its connectivity. Distinguishing between intra‐island, inter‐island, and international connectivity is essential in order to understand the nature of the challenges and causes behind the bottlenecks. High domestic shipping costs are identified as one key challenge. The Government of Indonesia has identified improved connectivity as a key issue in promoting economic growth, especially in the manufacturing sector, now that Indonesia can no longer rely on commodities as a driver of growth. Better infrastructure, regulations, and coordination among stakeholders are crucial components in promoting improved connectivity for manufacturing growth. Promoting investment in infrastructure is necessary, including both hard and soft infrastructure. However, Indonesian experience highlights that without regulatory reform and improved policy coordination, infrastructure investment will continue to lag behind. There is a need for an improved and empowered governance structure to turn investment plans into reality.     

Philippine Infrastructure and Connectivity: Challenges and Reforms

The Philippines has performed creditably well in the past few years. Ensuring better infrastructure and connectivity is crucial in attaining inclusive growth. This will require substantial investments in infrastructure. Various reforms to address the infrastructure lack were implemented but there is scope for more reforms: improving fiscal space, reforming budgetary processes, improving public‐private partnerships (PPPs) and the regulatory environment, and better policy coordination to address problems of connectivity and infrastructure. The Philippines has to continuously improve the governance framework, ensure stability and predictability of policies and regulations. Better coordination among a diverse set of governmental infrastructure bodies, and also between government and the private sector is needed to address infrastructure bottlenecks.     

基于变化分析的基本农田划定成果评价方法初探——以东港市马家店镇为例

东港市马家店镇新一轮土地利用总体规划修编划定的基本农田在地类构成质量上略有降低但基本保持平稳,农用地平均质量等级高于划定前平均质量等级,集中连片性有所提高,基本农田划定成果基本符合《基本农田划定技术规程》原则要求,具有科学合理性。基于地类构成、农用地平均质量等级、集中连片性变化分析的基本农田划定评价方法具有一定的合理可行性,为建立完善合理的基本农田划定成果检查验收方法提供了初步探索经验。     

高铁开通对中国航空客运网络连通性的影响

为了科学优化中国航空客运网络发展,选取2000—2018年中国定期通航的运输机场所在地级及以上城市的非平衡面板数据,将高铁开通视为一项准自然实验,采用多期双重差分模型实证分析高铁开通对中国航空客运网络连通性水平的影响。研究发现：高铁开通显著提升了中国航空客运网络连通性水平;高铁开通对节点中心性的提升作用不受该城市所处区域的影响,均有显著的促进作用,对东部城市中心性的促进作用大于中西部城市。     

中国城市体系的层级结构与城市群发展——基于城市全球竞争力、全球联系度及辐射能力的分析

中国城市与世界经济的联系日益紧密，有必要以全球城市为坐标系考察中国城市体系结构。以全球1007个城市为总体样本，基于全球竞争力和全球联系度分析中国292个样本城市的层级结构，结果表明：中国城市的全球竞争力差异较大，大部分城市的全球联系度较低，不存在扁平化趋势；中国已经形成多中心多层级的城市体系，具有明显的四级金字塔层级结构，但大部分中心城市的辐射能力较弱；大部分主要城市已经被纳入各城市群的次级城市体系中，但中心城市在各城市群中的分布不均衡，多中心城市群与单中心城市群并存，并表现出“纺锤型城”“哑铃型”和“金字塔型”三种形态的城市层级结构。城市群的发展成为中国城市体系演进的具体形态和主要推动力量，应充分发挥中心城市的扩散和聚集作用，以城市群内部的一体化发展和城市群间的协同发展构建协调发展的城市体系，进而促进整体区域协调发展。     

Biodiversity and Green Infrastructure in Europe: Boundary object or ecological trap?

The concept of green infrastructure is widely used in environmental planning, but so far it has no standard definition. Planners, conservationists and scientists tend to welcome the term because it can serve as a boundary object, providing links among policy makers, developers and different academic disciplines. However, the concept of green infrastructure creates risks for biodiversity conservation in its adoption. It can be used to water down biodiversity conservation aims and objectives as easily as it can be used to further them because of the different ideas associated with it and the multiple interests pursued. In this paper, we address such risks by looking, among others, at the European Union’s Green Infrastructure Strategy and we suggest how planners and conservationists might deal with its growing importance in environmental policy and planning to enhance its value for biodiversity conservation.     

An airline connection builder using maximum connection lag with greedy parameter selection

This paper introduces a methodology for designing an airline connection builder (CB) and adjusting its parameter settings. The objective of the proposed CB is to construct relevant connections that attract passenger demand while avoiding operationally infeasible and commercially irrelevant connections. Using worldwide MIDT booking data, we examined the sensitivity of CB results to the setting of the standard CB parameters maximum connection time and geographical detour. We demonstrated that CB performance can be increased by replacing these two parameters with connection lag, a measure that combines the impact of connection time with geographical detour on the total travel time of a given connection. We also found that the willingness of a passenger to book slower connections and the relationship between the number of passenger bookings and generated connections strongly depends on the O&D distance. Better results can thus be obtained by greedily determining the distance-specific CB parameter settings. The greedy adjustment of parameter settings reduces the number of unattractive connections generated, while keeping the number of covered passenger bookings high.     

Using connectivity for measuring equity in transit provision

This study proposes the assessment of equity in transit provision by using transit connectivity as a comprehensive impedance measure. Transit connectivity considers in-vehicle time, access/egress times, waiting time, service reliability, frequency, and ‘seamless’ transfers along multi-modal paths. In addition, transit connectivity weighs the impedance components according to their relative importance to travelers. The assessment of equity was performed for the multi-modal transit system in the Greater Copenhagen Area, renowned for its transit-oriented finger-plan. The assessment method used a GIS representation of the network (i.e., service lines, timetables, metro stations, train stations, and bus stops), and transit assignment results (i.e., level-of-service times, passenger flows). The assessment method proved effective in calculating location-based and potential-accessibility measures and Gini coefficients of inequality in the Greater Copenhagen Area. Results show that the transit-oriented development contributes to spatial equity with high connectivity in densely populated zones, vertical equity with comparable connectivity in high income and low income zones, inter-generational equity with good connectivity provision for students to higher-education and job opportunities. Also, results show that the north-west ‘finger’ is less equitable with lower connectivity for low population density and lower connectivity to higher-education opportunities regardless of the high number of students.     

Algebraic connectivity maximization of an air transportation network: The flight routes’ addition/deletion problem

A common metric to measure the robustness of a network is its algebraic connectivity. This paper introduces the flight routes addition/deletion problem and compares three different methods to analyze and optimize the algebraic connectivity of the air transportation network. The Modified Greedy Perturbation algorithm (MGP) provides a local optimum in an efficient iterative manner. The Weighted Tabu Search (WTS) is developed for the flight routes addition/deletion problem to offer a better optimal solution with longer computation time. The relaxed semidefinite programming (SDP) is used to set a performance upper bound and then three rounding techniques are applied to obtain feasible solutions. The simulation results show the trade-off among the Modified Greedy Perturbation, Weighted Tabu Search and relaxed SDP, with which we can decide the appropriate algorithm to adopt for maximizing the algebraic connectivity of the air transportation networks of different sizes. Finally a real air transportation network of Virgin America is investigated.