Urban Spatial Growth Regulation In Rapidly Urbanizing Lianyungang

Uncontrolled urban spatial growth,closely associated with irrational land-use conversion,has many negative environmental and societal impacts.This phenomenon is evident in China,which is challenged by the explosive urban growth that has taken place since the 1980s.To accommodate the rapid growth of industries and population,the land use conflict between ecologically important landscape protection and large-scale urbanization has become increasingly intensive in recent years.Development regulation measures are effective in controlling the location,rate,and timing of the urban growth.Proper spatial planning and regulation measures needed to coordinate the conflicts between increasing development demands and limited environmental carrying capacity during rapid urbanization.Based on the "Principal function" policy proposed by China’s 11th 5-year plan,this thesis reported a holistic research on the regulation of urban spatial growth during rapid urbanization.The structure of the study outlined as "Pattern-Zoning-Regulation".The thesis begins with the analysis of the pattern and characteristics of urban spatial growth in the study area during rapid urbanization.Next,the analytical and methodological frameworks of the integrated spatial regulation process are presented.This is followed by the assessment of regional environmental carrying capacity and development potential,which are the two basic factors of the regulation objectives.Finally,on the basis of implementation of the approach in the research area,the suitability and principal function of urban spatial growth are identified.The validity of the research approach is assessed,and the guidelines for future urban growth are proposed.The main findings are:The pattern of urban spatial growth during rapid urbanization is analyzed by land use change analysis.The results indicate that rather than the case of urban sprawl,the spatial growth of the study area may be viewed as a combination of ’urban spill’ and‘urban sprawl’.There are obvious spatial varieties of the growth pattern across urbanization gradient,i.e.between city districts and counties.The accelerating increase in industrial zones is playing an important role in boosting regional growth,spatially as well as economically.Based on the policy of "Principal Function",an improved approach integrating the urbanization intensity analysis is proposed to identify the suitability and regulation objectives of urban spatial growth,Focusing on the analysis scale/unit,approach of suitability assessment and function identification,relevant issues are discussed.An integrated,GIS-assisted "quantitative and qualitative" method is employed to deal with the methodological challenges.Environmental carrying capacity of the study area is evaluated by the two main elements of environmental importance and water environmental capacity,and the development potential is evaluated by three elements of socio-eco supporting capacity,spatial influence and location.The result shows that there are obvious limitations of future urban spatial growth due to the unfavorable condition of environmental carrying capacity.Most area(over 70%)is not suitable for large-scale urbanization or industrialization.The development potential of future urban spatial growth is characterized by rings around multi-driving-core;there is significant spatial variation of growth capability in the study area.The suitability analysis results show that only 7.26%of the area is favorable for future urban growth,while the area is less than the built area in 2008,indicates an obvious excessive and low efficient urban growth pattern during past 8 years.The conflicts between increasing urban area and environmental carrying capacity are extremely intensive.The utilization of urbanization intensity index(UII)is proved to be effective in identifying the growth problems and regulation objectives.