A Initial Study On-Urban Land Extension In Urmuqi City

Abstract: with the socio-economic development, the carry-capacity of urban land in Urmuqi become limited. So, analyzing and summarizing the regular pattern of urban land expansion is very important to the sustainable development in Urmuqi city. Choosing urban built-up area as the indicator for the urban development level, this paper provides a definite illustration of the spatial patterns and growth rates of changes resulting from urban development. This paper studies urban land scale change for 50 years by using principal components analysis and adopting qualitative description and quantitative analysis. It is found, temporally, urban land expansion can be briefly divided into 4 major stages .i.e., slow growing stage( 1886-1994) ,crawling increase stage(1949-1984), speeding rising up stage(1984-1999),and controlling develop stage(1999-2003). Spatially, the urban sprawl shows a "T"shape, have a centrifugal feature, encircling old city centre and along traffic road, from south to north. The pattern of urban sprawl by different driving forces in different times can be categorized into 4 typical patterns, such as traffic guided pattern (1952 –1967), industry dragged pattern (1967--1984), economic policy guided pattern(1984--1999), economic strength promoted pattern (1999--2003). In different periods, the intensity and effect are different .The urban land expansion resulted negative effect. In the future, the Urumqi urban sprawl is continued .There are two development pattern can be choosen ("T"and"Y"), but people must consider to protect the ecology environment and surround cities development.