Spatio-temporal Evolution Of Urban Fringe Settlements During Rapid Urbanization

Urbanization is a inevitable stage of all countries in their socio-economic development. China isundergoing rapid urbanization, whose urbanization speed is faster than any country in the world. Rapidurbanization has brought ‘aggressive’ space development and a series of urgent space issues. Urban fringe issuch an area, where occurs the most significant change in the spatial size, the development speed is fastest,and is most sensitive to enviromental changes. This area is not only witnessed the expansion of the city, butalso carries the existing problems during the expansion process. Urban fringe is also the link between theurban core and the rural hinterland, so it is possible to show a complete spatial process of urbanization. Urbanfringe settlements epitomize the human-land relationship of this region. They are under the pressure of urbandevelopment, facing or experiencing dramatic spatial evolution and modern transformation, so its spatialevolution is different from the settlements in other regional. In this context, this paper take Zhengzhou as ancase, which is a typical regional center city in plain area, to study the spatial evolution of urban fringesettlements. This is not only an important scientific problems, but also has important theoretical and practicalsignificance to enrich and improve the settlement theories and to guide a steady, reasonable and sustainablelandscape urbanization process.This paper selects three different scales, follows ‘pattern-process-mechanism’ the normal formulas ofspatio-temporal evolution, taking Zhengzhou, Henan Province for experimental example, using the methodsof landscape analysis, GIS spatial analysis, statistical analysis, etc to analyzes the expansion of build-up landin whole city, the spatio-temporal evolution of urban fringe and the urban fringe rural settlements, draws the following conclusions:(1) Urban spatial structure can be divided into urban core, urban fringe and rural hinteland. Based on thedivision, the settlements which are contained in the urban fringe are the urban fringe settlements. Urbanfringe settlements are characterized by transitional, mixed, dynamic and closely linked to urban core. Thelifespan of the urban fringe has three stages, the start point is traditional rural settlements, through the stage ofsuburban villages and outer suburban villages, urban villages, finally goes into urban communities. But in theprocess of development, some of the stages may be omitted.(2) Zhengzhou is a typical plain city. Before the initiation of reform and opening-up, this city formssingle-core spatial structure. Since entering the rapid urbanization phase, the characteristic of spatialevolution in Zhengzhou is ring expansion. So the development of Zhengzhou is typical. Since1970s, the sizeof build-up land in Zhengzhou sharp increase. According to spatial characteristics of size, speed and strength,anisotropy, form,‘hot spots’,etc. of the urban expansion, the spatial development phases can be divided intothe initial stage of accelerated development, mid-stage of fast-growing expansion, recent steady and rapidexpansion phase. Urban allometric growth turns positive from negative, urban space is growing faster thanpopulation growth. Urban spatial expansion is affected by many factors, population growth is endogenousdriving force, economic development is a decisive force, and administrative factors are having a special role.(3) There are two boundaries in urban fringe, the inner boundary and the outer boundary. the innerboundary of urban fringe is the boundary of the urban core area, and the outer boundary is influenced by citydevelopment, so the spatial evolution of urban fringe is closely associated with the whole city growth. Underthe traditional urban-rural isolation spatial distribution pattern, the urban fringe is not evident. In its earlyemergence stage, the spatial development shows ‘punctate-axis-spheres’ mode, then expands to both sides of the axis, this is sector expansion mode. At last, fill development makes the form of urban fringe moreregularity. The rapid development of urban fringe is due to unparalleled location advantages. Infrastructureconstruction directly affects spatial location, urban planning of new district will change the administrativelocation, the concentration of population and industry are to change the economic location. Interaction ofvarious factors, on the basis of changing the spatial location, will promote the development of urban fringe.(4) The dynamic evolution of rural settlements in the urban fringe demonstrated microscopic process ofurbanization. The spatial distribution and constitution of overall rural settlements are relatively stable. But inthe development the size and the landscape characteristics of rural settlements change significantly. Althoughthe overall size of rural settlements increased significantly during study period, the long-term trend is overallsize decreases, the size of the settlement monomer increases, density decreases, the form is more regular andcluster development.This paper also analyzes horizontal and vertical evolution of rural settlements in urban fringe. Based onthe spatial location, rural settlements are divided into urban villages, suburban villages and outer suburbanvillages. Three typies settlements have different characteristics in horizontal and vertical evolution. Duringthe lifespan of rural settlements in the urban fringe, there are homogeneous state, space fragmentation status,urban and rural isolation and integration of urban and rural four states. There are different factors affect thehorizontal and vertical evolution of rural settlements. The role of location in the rural settlementsdevelopment in the urban fringe is different from that in the traditional rural area. In the urban fringe, the ruralsettlements which have the locational advantages will be limitted the horizontal expansion, then acceleratesettlements disappeared.