Abstract:

The paper reviews the current focus and future direction of China's research in the field of territorial space use zoning and aims to provide a scientific basis for China's spatial planning and territorial and spatial land management with the wider goal of improving the system of ecological civilization to promote the modernization of national governance systems and governance capacities. We use CiteSpace, a visualization software and method of bibliometric analysis, to create a knowledge map and systematically categorize the research trends and development context of territorial space use zoning research, based on 662 relevant papers published from 1979 to 2020 and cited on HowNet. Research on territorial space use zoning in China continues to emerge, and the number of published papers is increasing. The research was divided into three stages: the land use zoning stage (1992-2006), the natural ecological space use zoning stage (2007-2017), and the territorial space use zoning stage (2018-present). The main research keywords in the three periods show that scholars have consistently maintained an enthusiasm for the study of "land use". The keyword "land use" had a high centrality of 0.28. Close cooperation among authors formed a large-scale scientific research cluster. Colleges and universities published the most, followed by scientific research institutions and public institutions; the main outputs of public institutions such as China Land Surveying and Planning Institute are policy documents, the influence of which should not be underestimated. 2) The research on territorial space use zoning was national policy-oriented under the profound influence of the changing background of the times. Zoning theory developed from the theory of geographical differentiation and advantageous location into the concept of main functional zone regulation, and then to the present concept of sustainable development. Zoning systems were constantly optimized, and research focuses were diverse. Some provinces and cities conducted practical explorations based on local conditions because of "Three zones and three lines". "Three zones and three lines" refers to the areas corresponding to the three types of urban space, agricultural space, and ecological space, and the three control lines corresponding to the urban development boundary, the permanent basic farmland protection red line, and the ecological protection red line. In the face of the complexity and dynamics of territorial space, research methods have changed from qualitative or quantitative methods to focus on the application of modern science and technology. Most of the research on zoning control focuses on three aspects: discovery of existing problems, enlightenment from foreign experience, and research on zoning practice. Considering the existing problems, such as conventional research contents, shallow scientific validation studies, insufficient theoretical improvements, few applications of multidisciplinary integration and big data, future researches should focus on four directions as follows: carrying out the theoretical research related to territorial space use zoning; deepening use zoning research on ecological space, marine space and rural construction space; broadening the research perspective of territorial space use zoning based on the construction needs of territorial space use control system; implementing innovative methods and technologies for application based on multidisciplinary integration.

Key words: territorial spatial planning, use zoning, land use, zoning regulation, CiteSpace