Impacts of transportation arteries on land use patterns in urban-rural fringe: A comparative gradient analysis of Qixia District, Nanjing City, China

Abstract

Integrated transportation and land use studies are of major interest to planners because they consider the interaction between transportation development and land use change. Quantifying the impact of transport infrastructure on land use change is necessary for evaluating the role of transportation development in the process of land use and land cover change in the urban-rural fringe. Taking Qixia District of Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, China as a typical urban-rural fringe area, this paper analyzes the patterns and characteristics of land use change along three major transportation arteries using land use data from 2000 and 2008. We examine the spatial differentiation and gradient of land use pattern around railway, expressway, and highway corridors to investigate whether land use change in the urban-rural fringe is related to distance from transportation arteries and to clarify the varying impacts of different forms of transport infrastructure on land use patterns. We find that construction land generally tends to be located close to major transportation arteries, and that railways have the most obvious influence on land use change in the urban-rural fringe, while the impact of expressways was not significant. We conclude that there exists a causal relationship between the presence of transportation arteries and land use change in the urban-rural fringe, but this relationship varies across different types of linear transport infrastructure.