Spatiotemporal dynamics of the urban sprawl in a typical urban agglomeration: a case study on Southern Jiangsu, China (1983–2007)

Abstract

China has experienced urbanization at an unprecedented rate over the past decades. Against this background, this paper demonstrates the multi-level spatiotemporal urban sprawl process from 1983 to 2007 on the perspective of urban agglomeration with a case study in Southern Jiangsu. Based on a combination of eight rounds of satellite images from 1983 to 2007, the presented results suggest the following three main findings: (1) At the prefecture-city level, the urban sprawl in Southern Jiangsu has presented significantly divergent growth patterns, with more than half of this vast growth occurring in the Suzhou prefecture-level city. (2) At the county level, clear spatial differentiations exist in the direction of the urban sprawl. The centroids of all county seats in the Suzhou and Wuxi prefecture-level cities have an eastward tendency (Shanghai oriented), while those of the county seats in the Changzhou prefecture-level city tend to be westward (Nanjing oriented). (3) At the township level, two convergent groups have gradually formed over time; namely, the low density urban zone in the western hilly land and the high density urban zone around the three central downtown areas. The urban areas close to urban cores tend to merge, showing a high-density convergent growth pattern, as do the western and southwestern townships in Southern Jiangsu, showing a low-density convergent growth pattern. All of these findings may be valuable for researchers and local authorities in providing reference for regional coordinated growth, environmental management, and urban planning decision-making.

Keywords

Southern Jiangsu / urban sprawl / spatiotemporal dynamics / rapid urbanization areas

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Acknowledgments

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41171325, 41230751, and J1103408), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-12-0264), National Project of Scientific and Technical Supporting Programs Funded by the Ministry of Science & Technology of China (No. 2012BAH28B02), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD). The authors are grateful to the Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS, USA) for providing some of the Landsat-5 TM images. Any errors or shortcomings in the paper are the responsibility of the authors.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg