International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B7, 2012
XXII ISPRS Congress, 25 August — 01 September 2012, Melbourne, Australia
QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF URBAN EXPANSION IN CENTRAL CHINA
Y. Zeng **, Y. Xu*, S. Li*®, L. He%, F. Yu”, Z. Zhen*, C. Cai*
? School of Geoscience and Geomatics, Centre for Geoinformatics and Sustainable Development Research, Central
South University, Changsha 410083, China - ynzeng@csu.edu.cn
? Department of Civil Engineering, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario Canada M5B 2K3 - snli@ryerson.ca
* School of Distance Education, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China - x-cne82(g)csu.edu.cn
Commission VII, WG VII/5
KEY WORDS: Urban Landscape, Dynamic Changes, Metropolitan Areas, Centre China
ABSTRACT:
Quantifying urban expansion forms is important to understanding regional urbanization processes and urban planning. For this pur-
pose, conventional landscape indices are commonly used for quantitative analysis of urban landscape patterns. However, these land-
scape indices only reflect information for one particular temporal phase of landscape patterns. This paper studies and quantifies the
dynamic changes of urban landscape from 1993 to 2006 in Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan metropolitan areas in Hunan province of
China using landscape expansion index (LEI), which contains information of the formation processes of landscape patterns. The re-
sults indicate that there are three types of urban expansions: infilling, edge-expansion and outlying in the study area. The change of
proportion of the three urban expansion types reveals that urban expansion patterns have changed from a messy, dispersed early de-
velopment phase to more compact and reasonable layout from 1993 to 2006. Moreover, the urban expansion modes varied in differ-
ent periods. From 1993 to 1996, the edge-expansion and outlying were the main types of urban expansion forms, indicating an early
stage of rapid urban developments. Comparing with the edge-expansion, the outlying expansion increased rapidly in this period,
which indicates urban development is messy and dispersion. Overall, the edge-expansion was the major type of urban expansion
form during the study period with outlying as the second and rapidly-increasing major form of expansion prior to 1998, which indi-
cates urbanization is in the early stage of rapid urban developments, and infilling as the second and rapidly-increasing major form of
expansion after 1998.
1. INTRODUCTION
Since the 20" century, urbanization has been accelerated global-
ly. With ongoing urbanization, a large population is inclined to
concentrate in urban areas. It is estimated that more than 50% of
the world’s population lives in urban areas and the projected
proportion of urban population will reach 69.6% by 2050, with
urban growth concentrated in Africa and Asia (UN Millennium
Project, 2005; UNFPA, 2007). As the largest developing coun-
try in the world, China has experienced unprecedented econom-
ic growth and rapid urbanization since 1980s. Its urban popula-
tion has rapidly increased. The projected proportion of urban
population will reach 75% by 2050, more that the world’s pro-
jected increase.
As the economic development policies are being implemented
in Central China, e.g., the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan metro-
politan areas in Hunan province. China has been experiencing
significant growth in both population size and urban area. Rapid
urbanization and accelerated urban expansion have converted
natural landscape to largely impervious land use patterns. These
landscape pattern changes associated with urbanization are im-
portant factors that contribute to ecological and climatic chang-
es at local, regional, and global levels. Therefore, quantitative
information about urban expansion types and processes and its
explicit expression are of great interest to diverse studies and
applications such as urban planning, water and land resource
management, and climate change research, among others. As a
result, it is important to quantitatively reveal urban expansion
forms for understanding the regional urbanization process, con-
trolling and planning future development of Changsha-
Zhuzhou-Xiangtan metropolitan areas.
The urban land use change is commonly described as either a
change of urban extent or the rate of urban land change. The ex-
tent and rate of urban expansion provide indications of the ag-
gregate size of cities and the rate at which non-urban land is
converted to urban uses (Seto et al., 2002). However, aggregate
growth rates and extent give limited information about spatial
patterns of urbanization. In order to quantify and describe
changes in urban land-use patterns beyond extent and growth
rates, landscape indices have been applied to urban morphology
(Luck and Wu, 2002; Herold et al., 2003; Seto et al., 2005).
Although these indices have been used to conduct empirical
analyses of landscape patterns, they are generally focused on
simple analysis and description of the geometric features of a
landscape patch or pattern, while neglecting information on dy-
namic changes of landscape patterns (Liu et al., 2009). In order
to describe urban expansion forms quantitatively, Wilson et al.
(2003) proposed a moving window method to quantify three ur-
ban growth types according to the percentage of land cover
types. Xu et al. (2007) distinguished different urban growth
types using the ratio between the length of common edge and
patch perimeter. Liu et al. (2009) developed a quantitative
method to identify and visualize different types of urban
growth.
The core area of Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan metropolitan in
Hunan, China includes the City of Changsha and its surround-
ing areas. The total area is about 1428.99 km? and is the key
center of economy, culture, manufacturing and transportation of
