Abstract: As a “strong periphery, weak center” pattern of polycentric city, the distribution of spatial elements include population, economy, land utilization, and traffic infrastructure show a feature of “large dispersion, small agglomeration”. A resident trip survey was conducted in October 2012 in Zhongshan city. Among the 80,000 samples surveyed, 40 445 are valid and used in this study. 446 TAZ (Traffic analysis zone) of the whole city are all included as spatial units. By using the function of spatial analysis and manual break of ArcGIS, the spatial pattern of job-housing ratio, commuting time, commuting distance, commuting direction of a low density of urbanization and polycentric city was portrayed. Responding to the urban spatial structure, the city's layer structure is not significant. The characteristics include job-housing ratio, commuting time, commuting distance, commuting direction. The job-housing spatial distribution present uniform as a whole, job-housing balance in the main city is more significant. The commuting time and commuting distance of Zhongshan’s residents are much shorter than those of big cities in domestic and in western cities. The ratio of commuting between the main city and the circumjacent towns is very low, the mass pendulum model of commuting flow between periphery and center does not exist. The commuting direction of the city presents that from center city to center city or from circumjacent towns to circumjacent towns. There has a close relationship between spatial pattern of job-housing relationship and those factors, such as city spatial pattern, demographic structure, industrial structure, industrial distribution, land utilization and transportation infrastructure.

Key words: polycentric spatial structure, low density of urbanization, spatial pattern of job-housing relationship, commuting, ArcGIS, Zhongshan