Abstract:

Cities are important logistics network nodes.Known as the economic development accelerator,logistics industry between cities and regions has become an important support and protection for city development. The level of development of city logistics has become an important symbol of comprehensive strength and modernization process of a city or the economic region.In order to adapt the functional requirements of the city economic activity,city logistics industry is also constantly developing towards the direction of specialization and integration.So city logistics emerge functional differentiation in the space,forming the spatial structure of the logistics industry.The study of the spatial structure of the regional logistics industry contributes to better draw up the logistics industry development plan for policy makers,to promote the integration and linkage and integrated development of the regional logistics industry.A city competitiveness evaluation index system of logistics was built by the method of principal component analysis to evaluate the logistics competitive level of the 28 central cities along the Yangtze River.From three dimensions of space,time and cost,taking comprehensive consideration of the three transportation modes of railways,highways and waterways,the integrated economic distance between cities was calculated.Based on application of the adjusted gravity model,the logistics linkage between the cities along the Yangtze River was measured.The results show that Shanghai,Nanjing,Wuhan,Chongqing acted as the important logistics industry nodes along the Yangtze River,and there is a clear gradient differences in internal structure hierarchy of cities logistics composite competitiveness in the downstream,midstream and upstream of the Yangtze River.Affected by distance attenuation law,the urban agglomeration internal linkage degree was significantly greater than the degree between the urban agglomeration.Downstream,midstream and upstream agglomeration exhibited different logistics spatial structure and significant spatial gradients difference characteristics.It initially formed a relatively complete logistics network structure in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River cities.The logistics network as the center of Wuhan was taking shape in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River cities.The logistics network system of upstream cities had not yet formed.This gradient difference coincided with the different levels of the internal structure of the composite competitiveness of the logistics industry in the downstream,midstream and upstream of Yangtze cities,confirmed the reality of the existence of a gap between the level of cities economic and social development in the downstream,midstream and upstream of Yangtze.Wanjiang urban agglomeration and the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration presented obvious logistics network convergence trend.The development of the logistics industry along the Yangtze River should be based on the reality of imbalance of the regional economic development in the downstream,midstream and upstream of Yangtze cities,and form the whole basin logistics network by polarization of many “node” cities which support the economic development gradient along the river with their neighbouring regions