Spatial reconstruction of “production-living-ecological space” and landscape ecological responses in high-density urbanization: Shanghai’s new cities

Abstract

Under the dual pressures of high-density urbanization and rigid land resource constraints, new town development is shifting from incremental expansion to stock optimization, necessitating a clearer understanding of spatial reconstruction types and their ecological effects. Using Shanghai’s Five New Towns as the study areas, this study developed a “Production-Living-Ecological Space” (PLES) classification system based on 0.8-meter high-resolution remote sensing imagery from 2019 and 2024. Land-use transfer matrices, the Expansion Speed Index (ESI), the Standard Deviational Ellipse (SDE), and multi-scale landscape pattern indices were integrated to characterize reconstruction types, coupling patterns, and ecological structural responses. The results reveal pronounced non-equilibrium evolution among the five new towns, with a 7.57-fold difference in ESI. Land supply structure strongly shaped ecological outcomes: stock-replacement towns achieved concurrent gains in living and ecological spaces, with net ecological increases of 2.30 and 1.01 km², whereas increment-dependent and stock-squeezed towns incurred net ecological losses ranging from −0.56 to −1.28 km². Ecological performance was further mediated by the spatial coupling of expansion and restoration: co-located coupling enhanced connectivity, whereas partitioned or axial-conflict coupling led to macro-ecological fragmentation and, in some cases, a scale-differentiated pattern of micro-improvement but macro-decline. These findings indicate that ecological performance in high-density new towns is determined less by expansion scale alone than by land supply structure and the spatial organization of expansion-restoration coupling, thereby providing a basis for differentiated spatial governance in high-density urbanized regions.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Production-living-ecological space (PLES) / new town construction / expansion-restoration coupling / landscape connectivity / high-resolution remote sensing

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Higher Education Press