Abstract
The dynamic urbanization process of China has stimulated a massive growth of urban settlements in the past few decades. With the development of remote sensing technology and the release of the long-time Landsat archive, spatial characteristics of urban settlement are gradually analyzed on a large scale, and various patterns are developed for describing and analyzing it. However, the urban settlement patterns were mainly quantified by the landscape metrics in existing studies, the underlying features shaping urban settlement pattern were always neglected. In this study, we establish a systematic and comprehensive ‘urban development index system’ for describing China’s urban settlement pattern and its evolutions during the end of the 1980s through to 2010 by using a series of statistical methods. Results show that (1) urban settlement pattern in 2010 is quantified comparatively simpler and more completely than in the end of the 1980s; (2) urban settlements in western and eastern regions present integrated pattern and homogeneous attributes, while urban settlements in central and northeastern regions present relatively complex pattern and various attributes; (3) urban settlements with the most variable pattern are accompanied by the most dynamic population and economic capacity, followed by landscape dispersion. Topographic complexity of urban settlements generally remained unchanged or with slight fluctuations, therefore, it has limited influence on settlement pattern evolution.
Highlights
Urbanization is a global phenomenon, with dimensions and effects differing across the globe [1]
Urban settlements of China were classified into nine categories in the end of 1980s but seven categories in 2010 by cluster analysis based on the three principal components
The spatial distribution of these categories indicates that urban settlements in the western region featured integrated patterns and homogeneous attributes, followed by the eastern region, while urban settlements in central and northeast regions featured relatively complex patterns and various attributes; urban settlements with unchanging patterns during 1980s and 2010 were mainly located in the western region, while urban settlements with changing patterns were primarily located in the eastern and central regions
Summary
Urbanization is a global phenomenon, with dimensions and effects differing across the globe [1]. The development of the urban population is usually considered an important measurement of urbanization [2]; it increased rapidly from 751 million to 4.2 billion from 1950 to 2018 in the world, and it is further expected that another 2.5 billion will be living in cities on our planet by 2050 [3]. Global urban land is expanding at twice the rate of population growth, and it is expected to exceed 1.1 million km by 2050 [4]. With the reform and opening-up policy starting at the end of the 1970s, the continuing economic growth of China stimulated the movement of large numbers of people from rural to urban areas [7], leading to the rapid growth of urban lands [8]. Lin et al [11] found that the average annual growth rate of urban construction land (i.e., land urbanization) of 658 cities in China was 6.89% during 2000 and 2010, which was obviously faster than that of population urbanization (around 2.75%) at the same time period; Chen et al [12] found that the urban areas in China expanded incredibly with a net growth of 513% between 1981 and 2012 according to the statistical data, while the net growth of urban population was 253%
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