Spatial Fairness and Changes in Transport Infrastructure in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Area from 1976 to 2016
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sustainability Article Spatial Fairness and Changes in Transport Infrastructure in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Area from 1976 to 2016 Xingchuan Gao 1,2,3 , Tao Li 2,3 and Xiaoshu Cao 2,3,* 1 School of Geography and Tourism, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, China; [email protected] 2 Northwest Land and Resource Research Centre, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, China; [email protected] 3 Key Laboratory for Urbanization and Land Environment Geo-simulation in Northwest China, Xi’an 710119, China * Correspondence: [email protected] Received: 30 October 2018; Accepted: 17 January 2019; Published: 23 January 2019 Abstract: The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau area (QTP) is the most unique environmental-population region and an important natural laboratory for the study of human-land relations. The poor transportation conditions have long restricted socio-economic development. The research on the transport infrastructure and spatial effect in the QTP is of significance to the sustainable development of the region. Accordingly, a spatial accessibility model was used to analyze the spatial pattern of accessibility in QTP from 1976–2016, examine the accessibility evolution trend on the township scale and reveal the spatial fairness and changes in accessibility. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The accessibility to major cities improved and the time-space convergence effect was significant. (2) The spatial autocorrelation analysis results showed that the improvement in transport infrastructure had a significant impact on the agglomeration of the accessibility level. (3) Access time from towns to the nearest major city are much shorter. More Tibetan people have more opportunities to access cities. (4) The accessibility coefficient and relative accessibility revealed distributive effects and spatial fairness of accessibility. (5) The global coefficient of variation value demonstrated an increasing trend, which indicates that spatial unfairness of transport is increasing. Keywords: spatial fairness; distributive effects; transport infrastructure; accessibility; the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau area 1. Introduction Transport infrastructure is a necessary prerequisite for promoting regional social and economic development and is a key factor in regional cohesion [1]. Transport construction and network expansion play vital roles in the future development of a region. Accessibility is an important measure of transport networks, used to measure the interaction potential between cities and towns [2]. Harris first measured accessibility using the market potential model in 1954 [3]. Then in 1959, Hansen studied the impact of accessibility on land use [4]. Transport fairness, brought about by the development of the transport network, is closely related to many social issues, such as the number of jobs available and the time spent in public transport [5]. Accessibility has been gradually recognized as an indicator of transport fairness [6–8]. Transport fairness is derived from the study of fairness and justice in other fields [7], in which “fairness” is regarded as the core component of “justice” [9,10]. The research on transport fairness is mostly concentrated on population distribution, investment and public facilities but the concept does not have a single, widely accepted definition [11–13]. In identifying transport fairness, two broad methods to conceive fairness are well-recognized: social fairness and spatial fairness [14]. The first is viewed from a social perspective, wherein vulnerable Sustainability 2019, 11, 589; doi:10.3390/su11030589 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2019, 11, 589 2 of 16 or disadvantaged populations are targeted. The second approach defines fairness in terms of spatial distributive effects, which means easy access, regardless of socioeconomic characteristics, satisfaction or disability [15,16]. In this paper, we adopt the viewpoints from Forth et al. [11] and Delbosc et al. [17] and define the spatial fairness of transport as transport infrastructure that provides benefits evenly among different geographic units. Because the effects of public policies tend to cluster around specific physical locations [18], spatial fairness approaches are well-suited to assess such distributive effects [19]. Transport fairness influences many social aspects, such as territorial cohesion [20], the cost and time spent on daily commutes [21] and on public services [22]. Accessibility is, though imperfect, the most appropriate measure of benefits from transport infrastructure investments [23,24] and transport equity [6,17,25]. Presently, the evaluation of transport fairness has mostly focused on the needs of different social groups [26–28], investment in transport facilities [24,29–31], access to urban facilities [32–34], transportation planning [23,35–38] and interregional linkage strength [25,39–41]. The development of transport infrastructure and improved accessibility have promoted economic relationships and enhanced regional fairness and cohesion in countries and regions such as the UK, Holland, Poland and the European Union (EU) [42–45]. Therefore, the study of accessibility and spatial fairness has become a hot topic in the fields of social economics, transportation planning and human geography. Studies have mainly discussed transport fairness in urban areas or in metropolitan areas, especially emphasizing the root causes of inequity in the distribution of public facilities in a city, while ignoring the spatial effects and spatial fairness of transport in areas of undeveloped economy and unbalanced ecosystem. Although studies on densely populated urban areas are important, the research at the regional scale can guide large-scale transportation and sustainable development planning. As stated above, research on the accessibility and transport fairness in ecologically fragile areas is an important issue in social sustainability and will be a focus of future research. 2. Study Area and Data 2.1. Study Area We selected the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau area as the study area. The Qinghai–Tibet Plateau area is known as “the Roof of the World,” as it contains the headwaters of most streams in Asia and the Third Pole of the Earth [46]. It is an important environmental barrier and the water source in the world and is also the frontier region and a concentrated severely poverty–stricken area of China [47]. However, due to restrictions related to geography, climate and society, transport development in the area has lagged behind for a long time, which historically has hindered the socio–economic development of the region [48]. However, with China Western Development and the construction of major infrastructure, the transport network greatly improved, which has promoted socio–economic development and stability in the region and improved living standards. Tibetans, almost herdsmen, exhibit seasonal rotational grazing, who graze at higher altitudes in summer and at lower altitudes (usually along roads or around towns) in winter. We believe that compared with social fairness, spatial fairness can better solve the current and future transportation planning and construction in a shorter period of time. Therefore, the study on the spatial fairness of transportation in the study area is conducive to improving people’s living standards and providing a useful reference for the development of such underdeveloped regions. The Qinghai–Tibet Plateau area lies between 25◦59037” and 39◦49033” N, 73◦29056” and 104◦40020” E (Figure1), with an area of about 2,542,400 km 2. In order to compare and analyze the evolution and characteristics of the transport network, we selected the administrative divisions of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau area in 2016 as the study area, which covers six provinces and autonomous regions including Qinghai, Tibet and parts of Xinjiang, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan. The major cities include two provincial capitals—Xining and Lhasa, five prefecture–level cities (Haidong, Changdu, Linzhi, Shannan and Shigatse), seven county–level cities (Delingha, Golmud, Yushu, Hezuo, Maerkang, Kangding and Shangrila) and 18 prefecture–level cities within the 100km buffer zone, including Kashi, Jiuquan Sustainability 2019, 11, 589 3 of 16 Sustainability 2019, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 3 of 15 andKashi, Chengdu. Jiuquan Thereand Chengdu. are 1972 There township are 1972 administrative township administrative units in the Qinghai–Tibet units in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau area. ForPlateau maintaining area. For analytical maintaining continuity, analytical changing continuity, administrative changing divisions administrative was not considered divisions during was datanot processingconsidered andduring analysis. data processing and analysis. Figure 1. The location of the study area. 2.2. Data Sources and Processing In this study, thethe Qinghai–Tibet PlateauPlateau areaarea datadata werewere sourcedsourced fromfrom thethe National Earth System Scientific DataData Sharing Sharing Service Service Platform. Platform. Administrative Administrative division division data were data obtained were obtained from the Resourcesfrom the andResources Environment and Environment Science Data Science Center Data of Chinese Center Academy of Chinese of Sciences.Academy The of Sciences. traffic road The network traffic road data werenetwork based data on were the national based on database the national at a 1:25,000 database scale at (Table a 1:25,0001). Vector scale data (Table for transport1). Vector networks data for intransport different networks years were in different