Simulating Urban Growth in Urumqi, Using the SLEUTH Model

Urumqi is the capital city of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in the northwestern part of China. The city has witnessed rapid growth in recent years, mostly because of the national and regional policies and its economic and social development. We implemented this study to understand the urban growth of Urumqi City, to forecast its growth tendency for the next two decades and to provide a basis for urban management. The SLEUTH are employed to build the urban growth simulation and forecasting model. We calibrated it with historical data derived from a time series of satellite images. The results showed the utility of the modeling method in explaining the spatial pattern of urban growth. In the future years during the forecast period, Urumqi city should focus on enforcing the urban internal spatial structure optimization and spatial displacement, paying attention to the urban internal differentiation, improving the economic value and utilization of urban land resources, controlling the speed of urban growth, and retaining certain land reserve and development space for the future development.