Regional Accessibility and Interaction Spatial Heterogeneity in Guangdong Province, China

The paper studies and models the regional accessibility and regional development interactions between 98 cities in the province of Guangdong, China. The idea behind this research is to investigate the spatial heterogeneity of regional development and infer some accessibility patterns, and to discuss and qualify the urban accessibility trends among the cities of Guangdong, and their potential impact for regional sustainable development. The study first introduces spatial accessibility measures and the spatial interpolation methods within a Geographical Information System (GIS) to illustrating the spatial distribution and heterogeneity of accessibility patterns in Guangdong. Furthermore, under the combination of influences derived from spatial impedances, this paper gives a novel potential-based accessibility measure with social and economic factors to discuss and explore the overall spatial pattern of regional accessibility and interactions between the cities. As a result, the potential accessibility patterns highlight substantial differences in regional accessibility and regional development level in Guangdong. This study indicates that the key factors related to the emergence of spatial differences in regional accessibility involve geometrical properties, socio-economic factors and transportation opportunities. Moreover, this study reveals several issues in the industry restructuring and layout optimization by exploring the spatial patterns characteristics, variations and heterogeneity in Guangdong, China.