Study Of The Theory And Strategy Of The Urban Fringe

The global urbanization and urban sprawl is the overall development trend ofcities all over the world today. During the process of urban sprawl, the spatialstructure of a city often goes through the biggest transformations and the urban fringearea sees the fastest transition of land use modes. On one hand, the internal land usestructure of the fringe area evolves from rural land use to urban land use. On the otherhand, the external boundary of urban fringe area usually spread outward. As arelatively independent geographic entity, the predominant characteristic urban fringearea lies in the disorder of its sprawl. The fast speed and disorder of urban sprawlcaused a series of problems concerning the population, land resource, economy, socialand ecological environment. In China, the symptoms are the explosion of urbanpopulation, the wasting of land resources, the draining of farmland, the booming ofurban villages, the polarization of the society, the segregation of the rich and the poor,the deterioration of mountain and wetland, the pollution of the atmosphere and waterbody, etc. Focusing on the primal problems in urban development, the research on theurban fringe area has become one of the hotspot area in urban planning and relatedstudies.The paper used Wuhan city as a case study in the theoretical investigationtheoretical research and empirical analysis of urban fringe area. Based on the studiesof the development process, mechanisms of formation, characteristics and currentproblems, the paper further discussed the immediate and effective solutions fordisordered sprawl in the urban fringe areas. The study is not only of great importanceto the completion of urban planning theoretic system, but also of important practicalvalue in the coordination of relations between the urban and rural areas, theoptimization of the urban spatial structure and form, the conservation of urban landresources, the promoting of civic politics, as well as the coordinated development ofthe society, economy and the environment. Staring from the analysis of the differentdefinitions of urban fringe area from home and abroad, the paper presented adefinition of urban fringe area which can best suit the current situation in China andthen studied the development history and current situation of theories concerning urban fringe area. Through the further comparison of the formation anddevelopment of urban fringe area both home and abroad, the paper generalized themethods in the zoning of urban fringe area and put forward the principles for thezoning of urban fringe area at present in China Supported by RS and GIStechnologies, the paper adopted the research method of analyzing the formation anddevelopment of urban fringe area from the perspective of urban historical evolutionand further tested the theoretical result and research findings using the case study ofthe historical process of the urban evolution of Wuhan the formation and developmentof its fringe area. With a in depth probing into the elements, functions, comparison,general features and existing problem of urban fringe area in the Chinese large cities,the paper establish a theoretical methods system of fringe areas and the preliminarytechnical approaches for empirical researches on the complicated issues of urbanfringe spaces from the systematic and comprehensive perspective, supported by RSand GIS technologies.Citing Wuhan as an example, the paper had in-depth analysis of the majormaterial elements, such as the industry, residential districts, ecological environmentas well as non-material elements, i.e. the social space, which influence thedevelopment of urban fringe areas; furthermore, targeted at the series of problemarose from the disordered fringe area sprawl of large Chinese cities, the paper lookback on related theories and practices, and propose the measures for the establishingof an anti-sprawl ecological containing circles in the urban fringe area. Itsultimate purpose is to find a planning solution to the problems caused during theprocess of disordered sprawl in urban fringe area rather than the constraining of urbandevelopment. The approach is to mould the urban spatial form through the use of aeco-containing circle so as to control the rapid and disordered sprawl in urban fringeareas and grow new urban development spaces through a rapid transit systemextending from the inner-city area. The objective is to achieve the organic growth ofcities, the conservation of land resources, and the protection of the equilibrium of thenatural and ecological environment so as to realize the orderly, harmonious andsustainable urban development...