Evolution of the Process of Urban Spatial and Temporal Patterns and its Influencing Factors in Northeast China

The evolution of urban temporal and spatial patterns in Northeast China is complicated. In order to study the urbanization process in this area, explore the spatial and temporal laws of urban development in Northeast China, and find the main influencing factors affecting urban development in Northeast China, DMSP/OLS images are used as data sources. Urban built-up areas in Northeast China from 1993 to 2013 are extracted and temporal and spatial patterns of urban development are studied. Combining the economic, population, industrial structure, ecological and other statistical data, a geographical detector is applied to study the main influencing factors of urban development in Northeast China. According to a selection of 10 typical cities, the annual urban expansion speed and the urbanization intensity index are calculated to quantitatively analyze the development of typical cities. The present study indicates that the urbanization process in Northeast China was slow during 1995-1996. In fact, except for Daqing, the other typical cities developed slowly before 2003. While the urbanization process accelerated after 2003, it reached to its maximum rate in 2010. Moreover, it is observed that from 1993 to 2013, centers of cities gradually moved to their regional centers. On the other hand, it is concluded that from 2004 to 2013, the regional gross domestic product (GDP), GDP of the secondary industry, gross industrial product, GDP of the tertiary industry and the total investment in fixed assets were main indicators of the urbanization that affected change in the urban built-up area in Northeast China. Among them, the regional GDP had the greatest impact on urban development. As an old industrial base in China, the secondary industry mainly drove urban development before 2010. It is concluded that urban development began to change from 2010 and the driving force for urban development gradually changed from industry to the tertiary industry.