Spatial Impact of High-speed Railway on the Urban Scale: An Empirical Analysis from Northeast China

The emergence of rapid transit, primarily represented by high-speed railway (HSR), while reshaping the regional traffic patterns, leads to the reconstruction and redistribution of population and industry. This leads to either shrinkage or expansion of urban scale. However, research on the influence mechanisms of the urban scale has mostly concentrated on historical, economic and social factors. The influence of traffic factors is rarely mentioned in current research. Therefore, this study examines Northeast China, where the change in urban scale is most significant, to discuss the spatial impact of high-speed railway on the urban scale. This is of great significance in terms of enriching current understanding of the factors affecting the urban scale. The results included the following: 1) The high-speed railway produced considerable space-time convergence effects, however, simultaneously aggravated the imbalance in traffic development in Northeast China. The increase in accessibility presents attenuation characteristics from the high-speed railway. Additionally, the high-speed railway has changed the mode of cooperation between cities in the provinces, inter-regional and inter-provincial cooperation models gradually become popular. 2) The change rate of accessibility and the urban scale present significant spatial coupling phenomena, with the change rate of the Harbin-Dalian trunk lines and its surroundings being more significant. 3) There are predominantly four modes of the influence of high-speed railway on the urban scale, which make difference city present expansion or shrinkage.