Abstract:

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (referred to as "GBA") is an important strategic deployment for China's current economic development. Clarifying the spatial structure characteristics of the GBA urban agglomeration is conducive to optimizing its spatial structure to develop into a multi-center network spatial structure and promoting coordinated regional development. This study uses the advantage of Luojia1-01 nighttime light data, which can distinguish the difference in urban night light intensity. Through multi-scale segmentation of nighttime light intensity, the potential center range is established. The point of interest (POI) data are used for spatial autocorrelation analysis and geographically weighted regression to identify the multi-center distribution of the GBA urban agglomeration, and to analyze its spatial structure characteristics from multiple perspectives such as functional structure identification, spatial correlation measurement, and main center service range. The following list illustrates what the results show. 1) The GBA has five main centers and 14 sub-centers, including the main centers of Guangfo, Shenguan, Hong Kong, Aozhu, and Zhongshan. The functional structures of the five main centers are mainly mixed functional areas, and 14 sub-centers (such as Huadu, Zengcheng, Conghua, Huicheng, Duanzhou, Xinhui, Shiqi) are distributed around the periphery of the main centers. 2) The correlation strength of the five main centers and nine cities plus two special administrative regions in the urban agglomeration, calculated based on the Luojia1-01 nighttime light data, shows characteristics of "strong in the east and weak in the west" and "strong inside and weak outside." 3) The study considered the distribution of the main centers of the urban agglomeration and their spatial correlation strength characteristics, as well as the three groups served by the main centers (Guangfozhao group, Gang-Shenguanhui group and Ao-Zhuzhongjiang group), combined with the planning requirements of the "Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area" and "Guangdong Province Land and Space Planning (2020-2035)." The findings suggest that the GBA should build a regional spatial structure of "five centers, one area, three groups and four axes" to achieve pole-driven, axis-supported, and group cooperation and promote its coordinated development into a world-class urban agglomeration.

Key words: Luojia1-01, POI, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, urban agglomeration multi-center, spatial correlation, nighttime light data