A Study On The Characteristics And Causes For Urban Sprawl In Beijing

According to the "s" shape urbanization process by Nontham, almost all of cities in the world have experienced form fast to slow and from slow to fast until the curve of urbanization process has worked up to a certain degree. In the developed countries, the city has passed through a period of rapid urbanization. Now, china has been experiencing the process. But Beijing, as the capital of China, does not stop at this stage.For example, in 1992, the urbanization level in China was only 27.6 percent, Beijing had been as high as 70%. So, it will be better to compare the urbanization process of Beijing with America, which is the most developed country in the world. And as most of cities in America, Beijing has also fallen into suburbanization. Urban sprawl follows. Rapidly spreading of land and population expansion has been appeared in Beijing since reform and opening-up, especially in 21st century. On the basis of definition of urban sprawl at home and abroad, particularly the definitions given by Beijing for the typical, this article tries to give a an well-defined concept. Besides, this article describes the characteristics of sprawl in Beijing by using four basic sprawl indices used by America, which are population suburbanization, land, land-population elastic coefficient(or urban population density),and the contact among residential, industrial and commercial areas. Then, there are analyses of the reasons for the sprawl from the economics. At last, in contrast with the characteristics and reasons for the urban sprawl in America, that lay a foundation for the control of sprawl and urban sustainable development.