Abstract
China is the world’s largest developing country and its regions vary considerably. However, spatial heterogeneity in determinants of urban expansion in prefecture-level cities have not been identified. The present study explored the spatiotemporal characteristics of Chinese urban expansion and adopted a geographically weighted regression (GWR) method to determine this spatial heterogeneity. The results indicated that China experienced massive urban expansion during 1990–2015, with urban areas growing from 4.88 × 104 km2 to 1.06 × 105 km2, 46.42% of which was distributed in the eastern region. The results of the GWR model revealed the spatial heterogeneity in the determinants of urban expansion. Marketization was vital for urban expansion and had a stronger impact in the developed eastern and southern regions than in the less-developed northern and western regions. Globalization and decentralization bi-directionally affected urban expansion. The constraining effects of physical factors were limited and stronger in the developing northern region than in the developed southern region. Identifying the varying determinants of urban expansion is essential for policy-making in various regions.
Highlights
China has undergone considerable urbanization since the reform in 1978
In geographically weighted regression (GWR) models, 89.011% of cities demonstrated a significant relation between urban expansion and secondary industry (SND) (Figure 6a), and in the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, the SND was positively and significantly expansion and SND (Figure 6a), and in the OLS regression, the SND was positively and significantly related to urban expansion (Table 3)
Previous studies generally used GDP to represent the industry development [5,24], while we divided into secondary industry and tertiary industry
Summary
China has undergone considerable urbanization since the reform in 1978. The rapid pace of urbanization has caused substantial urban expansion that has profoundly changed the global ecosystem and resulted in a multitude of environmental problems [1,2]. Studies have explored determinants of urban expansion, which can be grouped into natural and socioeconomic factors [5,6] Nature feature, such as geological conditions [7], slope, elevation [8] and climate [9] are considered fundamental for urban development and partly determinate the suitability of construction land [5,6,10]. Socioeconomic factors such as economy growth [11], population growth [12], social process [13,14], infrastructure and transport [5,15,16], national policies and institutions [17,18]
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