Urban Sprawl And Dynamic Simulation Of Shanghai

In this thesis, urban land use datasets derived from aerial photos of Shanghai from 1989 to 2005 and DEM data were used to analyse spatiaotemporal dynamics of urban land use, urban morphological characteristics and urban growth pattern during rapid urbanization processes of Shanghai. SLEUTH model was employed to predict urban land use change and urban expansion from 2006 to 2035. And finally, the driving forces of urban growth was analysed as well. My findings are as following:(1) Urbanization was the main driver to urban land use change. Urban land, traffic land and public green areas increased, meanwhile the arable land, rural residential land decreased significantly. Among all land use types, the largest transformation was that of arable land converted to urban land. Land use change has exhibited a significant temporal heterogeneity. There were two rapid urban growth periods of 1989-1994 and 2000-2005, especially the period of 2000 to 2005, the urban growth and land use change has reached the highest level in the history. But from 1994 to 2000, land use change was at a relatively lower level. The degree of urban land use has increased gradually, meanwhile, the landscape fragmentation and separation was also increased significantly.(2) The urban growth showed a distinct spatial and temporal heterogeneity. The urban land exhibited obvious spatial heterogeneity between different quadrants, and temporal differences within the same quadrant. The main urban growth happened in the westbysouth and south-west direction. The expansion intensity was lower in the eastbynorth and northeast direction. While the urban growth in the southeast direction mainly concentrated along the Huangpu River. The spatiotemporal heterogeneity of urban growth also presented a distance-dependant effect, i.e. the urban expansion intensity for all time periods exhibited an increase and then decrease pattern along the urban-rural gradient. The peak occurred in the urban fringe and moved outward over time. The radiation effect and distance of the urban central area was stronger over time.(3) The urban growth presented different patterns during the urbanization processes. In the earlier stage of urbanization from 1989 to 1994, the urban growth dominated by edge-expansion type around urban fringer area. In the accelerated stage, from 1994 to 2000, the edge-eapansion growth continued but slowed down, meanwhile, the adjacent small towns and districts initiated their edge-expansion growth, and the linear development or ribbon development orrcured along corridors such as traffic line. The whole area exhibited a multi-center growth. This multi-center growth boomed with the combination of edge-expansion, ribbon development, sprawling and leap-frog development. The infill growth always happened through the whole study period from 1989 to 2005.(4) SLEUTH model could well simulated the future urban growth and land use change under four different scenarios with different protection levels from 2006 to 2035. Under no-protection scenario, urban land increased 912.67km2. The augment of urban land decreased with the protection level enhanced. The urban growth with protection level will distinctly affect the urban landscape pattern. From no-protection scenario to light protection scenario and then to moderate protection scenario, the profile of fractal index (PAFRAC) and largest patch index (LPI) exhibited an exponential style, it will tend to stable at the year of 2015-2020. The mean nearest neighborhood index (ENN_MN) presented a similar pattern with that of PAFRAC and LPI under the scenarios of light and moderate protection, but exhibited a pattern of increase then decrease. All these together indicated that the lower the protection, the higher disorder the expansion. But under highest protection scenario, the three indexes showed trifle change indicated the urban landscape pattern keep rather stable.(5) The main driving forces of urban growth were identified as government decision-making, socio-economic development, transport infrastructure, population growth as well as natural environmental conditions which together shaped the current urban growth pattern and growth rate during the past 16 years in Shanghai.