In China and a number of other countries, recent years have seen a prevailing trend in collective and cooperative urban development transforming individual cities to polycentric metropolis. Such phenomenon, also termed “urban agglomeration” by some researches in China, has gradually become the main body of urbanization and basic terrain unit in participating international competition and international division of labor. However, the spatial delimitation of urban agglomeration has been historically heavily influenced by “subjective” administrative instruction, as opposed to being primarily driven by radiation effects by regional central cities. In order to better delimitate the urban agglomeration sphere in China and other fast‐developing areas, this work seeks to scientifically assess and comprehensively delimitate the spatial patterns of regional central cities’ radiation through quantitative analysis and modeling. Zhengzhou, a typical regional central city in central China is chosen as the study case. First, it makes a modification to traditional gravity model by constructing RQI (radiation quality index) and integrating distances representing commuter traffic, economic development gap, and cultural psychological factors. Subsequently a comprehensive delimitation is derived that demarcates and describes Zhengzhou's urban radiation toward 42 neighboring cities by applying radiation field intensity model, radiation effect function, and judgment vectors of urban radiation ring‐layer model. The chief findings are that Zhengzhou's radiation effect is not prominent compared to other similar provincial capital‐level cities. There is no distinct psychological or spatial differentiation between Zhengzhou and its 42 neighboring cities. The economic distance between Zhengzhou and other cities have been stable, even shrinking while there are notable differences among fixed range ring patterns. The interaction forces between Zhengzhou and neighboring cities have increased and radiation field intensity of Zhengzhou has been expanded to outer rings. However, some cities along the provincial boundary received very limited influence from Zhengzhou, and are significantly more influenced by other radiation sources. In 2001 and 2009, there are 26 and 24 cities that fall in Zhengzhou's urban radiation rings, respectively, while only 7 cities are included in the core and primary radiation ring. This list of 7 cities excluded Luohe City, in spite of its administrative inclusion within Zhengzhou. Interestingly, Zhengzhou's urban radiation ring contracts in its southern and western quadrants, whereas it expands in eastern and northern quadrants. This finding prompts us to advocate the city of Zhengzhou to prioritize on expanding its radiation to the southeastern area around the Zhongyuan Urban Agglomeration. Such balanced development could prove beneficial to not only Zhengzhou City, but also the entire Henan Province.
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