Abstract
Rapid urbanization has caused numerous problems, and the urban spatial structure has been a hot topic in sustainable development management. Urban spatial structure is affected by a series of factors. Thus, the research model should synthetically consider the spatial and non-spatial relationship of every element. Here, we propose an extended Voronoi diagram for exploring the urban land spatial pattern. In essence, we first used a principal component analysis method to construct attribute evaluation indicators and obtained the attribute distance for each indicator. Second, we integrated spatial and attribute distances to extend the comparison distance for Voronoi diagrams, and then, we constructed the Voronoi aggregative homogeneous map of the study area. Finally, we make a spatial autocorrelation analysis by using GeoDA and SPSS software. Results show that: (1) the residential land cover aggregation is not significant, but spatial diffusion is obvious; (2) the commercial land cover aggregation is considerable; and (3) the spatial agglomeration degree of the industrial land cover is increased and mainly located in urban fringes. According to the neo-Marxist theory, we briefly analyzed the driving forces for shaping the urban spatial structure. To summarize, our approach yields important insights into the urban spatial structure characterized by attribute similarity with geospatial proximity, which contributes to a better understanding of the urban growth mechanism. In addition, it explicitly identifies ongoing urban transformations, potentially supporting the planning for sustainable urban land use and protection.
Highlights
Urban surfaces currently cover only between 3% and 5% of the total land surface of the Earth, environmental impacts in relation to urban growth have become a major concern around the world [1]
These transformations raise a series of questions: Is our urban spatial structure sustainable development? How can policy most effectively shape urban morphology and manage urban spatial structure, expansion and decline or agglomeration and dispersion? What guidelines should we provide for policymakers and regional planners to note the future development of our urban environment? Addressing such questions requires an explicit model to discover the aggregation tendency of spatial entities, the distribution rules, the development and change tendency and the driving forces for shaping the urban spatial structure from spatial data [12,13]
Wuhan is at a stage of rapid urbanization, and urban studies are needed for a better understanding of the urban growth mechanism, to support land use planning for sustainable urban land use and protection
Summary
Urban surfaces currently cover only between 3% and 5% of the total land surface of the Earth, environmental impacts in relation to urban growth have become a major concern around the world [1]. Recent decades have witnessed unprecedented urban landscape changes, rapid land use changes found in urbanization processes, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity and the exploration of available resources, leading to scarcity [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. These transformations raise a series of questions: Is our urban spatial structure sustainable development? The characterization and modeling of urban spatial structure has been highlighted as an important research activity in recent years, especially in those countries with rapid urbanization and industrialization, such as China [15,16,17]
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