RESEARCH ON THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANCIENT TOWNS IN CHINA

Ancient towns were not only important carieers of our country's materia culture and spiritual culture,but also were the material basis of ancient town tourism development.In recent years,scholars had paied high attention to the research of the ancient towns,but there were few research on the spatial distribution of the ancient towns.Using ArcGIS 9.3 analysis software,the unbalance index and the geographic concentration index to analysis the overall distribution characteristic of the ancient towns in China and their regional distribution characteristics in eastern,central and western China.Results showed that the overall distribution was concentrating,mainly in eastern and western China.And the regional distributions were aslo in unbalance,in eastern China,the ancient towns concentrated mainly in zhejiang,Jiangsu provinces,in western China,mainly in Guizhou,Sichuan and Yunnan provinces,and in central China,mainly in Anhui province.Factors affecting the spatial distribution of the ancient towns in China mainly relied in the tourist resources endowment,location,the regional economic development level,traffic accessibility and culture.