Rural development level of villages in Wuhan City’s new urban districts and its hierarchical structure

Abstract

Taking administrative village as the research unit and starting from the five dimensions of rural settlement, land use, population, economy, and human settlement environment, this study firstly constructed an evaluation index system of rural development level. Then using spatial autocorrelation, hotspot analysis, and rank-size rule, we analyzed and evaluated the spatial pattern and scale hierarchy of rural development levels. The results are as follows: 1) The spatial differentiation of rural development level in Wuhan City's new urban districts is obvious, and rural development shows a significant spatial agglomeration characteristic at the administrative village level. The administrative villages with high level of rural development are concentrated in the junction of the southern part of Huanghua District and the eastern part of Dongxihu District, the eastern part of Hannan District, and the northern part of Jiangxia District. The administrative villages with average development level and below are widely distributed. 2) The scale of rural development in the new urban districts is in line with the rank-size rule. The development of high-level administrative villages are insufficient but the medium-low order administrative villages are widely developed, the rural scale spreads over a wide range, and the level of urbanization needs to be improved. 3) The hierarchical system of rural settlements in the new urban districts presents a pyramid structure, which is similar to the central place theory model based on market principle (K=3), and the level of the center is lower. Finally, according to the results of the study, policy recommendations for rural development were put forward.