Study On Land Expansion And Its Background Of Urban Settlement In Xi'an City

Urban regionalization and regional urbanization is the direction forthe urban development nowadays and in the future. Since 1960s, several importantExtended Metropolitan Regions (EMR) in the world have been more developed,and new Urban Agglomeration (UR) has sprung up. In China, city-and-townconcentrated areas with different sizes from coastland to hinterland have beenformed, and the concept planning for urban development based on city-and-townconcentrated areas are in full swing putting up at present throughout the country,which present by urban land use, that is expansion of urban land use, enlargementof city-and-town size and the built area, spread of urban fringe and amount ofplanet towns soaring.Xi'an city, for the moment, is at the stage of medium-term industrializationand fast developing urbanization, and regional urban development is at the phaseof accumulation with high speed. In year 2004, the level of urbanization is 44percent, expecting in year 2010 72 percent and in year 2020 80 percent. Withaccumulation and concentration of the flow of economic elements and massfloating population to the towns and city zones, the city size in Xi'an city isincreasingly rising, and the demand of land going up, bringing a conflict betweeneconomic development and limited land resources. Then, how to solve the problemand make them go along harmoniously and coordinately is a big question?This paper, with Xi'an city as a case, using the theory of Urban Geography,Economical Geography and Land Economics and supported by GIS, based on theRS image data and correlative information and maps on land use, gives a study onland expansion and its background of urban settlement in Xi'an city. This researchplays an important role in exploring and managing land resources rationally,planning the layout of urban settlement, optimizing the spatial structure of urbansettlement, harmonizing the relation between urban development and land use andcarrying the strategy of Western Development and constructing the New Rural inXi'an city. And the findings indicate that as follows:1 There is a direct relation between the development of urbanization and theland expansion of urban settlement in Xi'an From the development stage of urbanization, regions which have achieved theprocess of urbanization around the year 1990, belong to being relatively stable orlightly extended such as Xincheng district, Beilin district and Lianhu district, andregions which have come into the process of accelerated urbanization around theyear 1990, belong to being high extended such as Weiyang district and Yantadistrict.From the process of urbanization, there is strong consistency at the time stagebetween the decrease ratio of farmland area and the change of urbanization ratio.From the spatial structure of urbanization, there is high consistency betweenthe development direction of Xi'an along the main traffic axes and the landextension direction of urban settlement. And the circle and axis extension isobvious.2 The land expansion of urban settlement in Xi'an is much more influencedby macro-scopical regional backgroundAt Shaanxi province layer, the regional development is at the medium stage,and cities grows with the agglomeration as the leading. The population outsideevidently assemble to the city, especially the super city, and the total of urbanpopulation is soaring, bringing the enlargement of urban scale and the increase ofthe construction land.At Guanzhong city-and-town concentrated areas layer, the regional urbandevelopment is at the phase of accumulation with high speed, and thecharacteristic of spatial agglomeration for economic elements and populationflows is obvious, the process of regional urbanization with Xi'an as the corequickens up, producing the demand to the land use.At Xi'an territory layer, Xi'an, from the trend of population migration andchange of population density, is still at the stage of population accumulation. Withthe centralization of mass population to the city core, the urban scale increasinglygoes bigger, as a result bringing the expansion of urban land use and spread ofurban fringe.The innovation of the paper are illustrated as follows:1 From data and method, this paper has a multiple layers analysis on thedynamic change of the land expansion of urban settlement in Xi'an city, with RSimaginary as the data resource and GIS technology as the method. 2 This paper, from contents and thinking, throws over the traditional thoughtwhich does research on land expansion just from it, and gives a priority to thebackground analysis on land expansion, seeking its urbanization andmacro-scopical region cause.