Backwash-Spread Effects of Transportation Corridors on the Development of City Groups

Abstract

Transportation corridors have backwash-spread effects to their surrounding areas on diverse resources, and this is the main factor in regions’ generation and expansion. This paper defines corridor field potential energy on the basis of the gravitational field theory to evaluate the backwash-spread effects of major transportation corridors in order to quantify the corridors’ impact on city development. In the proposed method, the field potential energy of a city node is estimated with three factors regarding the economic development level, generalized transport cost, and backwash-spread scale. Socioeconomic data and traffic data from the Chang-Zhu-Tan city group in 25 and 212 were used in the investigation as a case study. The results indicate that the proposed method could appropriately fit the corridors’ impact to cities, and the backwash-spread effects of corridors show a strong spatial and temporal variation depending on the specific geographic and economic condition of city nodes. The impact mechanisms of the backwash-spread effects suggest that corresponding measures could be taken with the aim of reaching the optimal use of the corridors.