Spatio-temporal patterns of urban growth in the area around Taihu Lake, China

Rapid urbanization and industrialization have been going with urban growth and pattern evolvement in relatively developed regions of China's coast. This paper presents an integrated study on the urban growth patterns of the area around Taihu Lake, China, by using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing. High-resolution Landsat TM data in 1985, 1995, 2000 and 2005, and socioeconomic data are integrated to analyze the spatio-temporal patterns and driving factors of urban growth on regional scale. Temporally, urban growth of ATL region experienced some wavy stages, patterns changing from surrounding expansion to fill-in development and then to 'jumping' growth in three stages. Then on level of counties, the regional difference of urban area has been becoming more and more distinct, and the urban growth has the spatio-temporal patterns of combining centralization and decentralization. On level of gridded units, the distribution of high-speed grid clusters moves from north to east part of the study area. Most of the growth cells distribute along the main transportation lines, such as national roads or railways. Lastly, the major factors influencing urban growth are also discussed. In general, there is an obvious positive correlation between urban growth and population as well as economic development, but the correlation coefficients present a decreasing tendency. And the economic factors play a more important role in promoting urban growth.