Theory And Practice Of Urban Sprawl

Since the Reforms and Opening, Shanghai has got a rapid development. At the same time, a lot of urban elements, such as the population, industry, employment and traffic, are sprawling to the fringe area and suburbs. Shanghai has been in "urban sprawl" - a new phase of urbanization.The aim of the paper is to analyze the urban sprawl of Shanghai. Taking the population distribution, land utilization and traffic development as the research objects and using the knowledge on demography and geography as the research methods, the paper summarizes the theory, the technique and the influence of urban sprawl; applies the technique of urban sprawl and the data of population distribution to research the time characters of the urban sprawl and the phrase of the urban development; applies SPSS software to find the effect from the urbanization to the cultivated area; uses some land utilization indexes to analyze the variety of land utilization in Baoshan and Nanhui districts. At last, the paper analyzes the characters of Shanghai bus distribution and researches the influence from the development of Shanghai Metro to urban sprawl.The paper debates the processing and impetus of urban sprawl from three aspects, the space-time change of population distribution, the structure transformation of land utilization and the development of traffic. In the whole processing of the urban sprawl of Shanghai, a lot of urban elements are sprawling of the suburbs. A new phrase of urban sprawl can be foreseen with the establishment of the new traffic net and the exploitation of the Yangtze Delta.