Wuxi Urban Land Conversion Process (1998 To 2008) And Its Drive Mechanism

The conversion of land is the process during which farming land converts to construction land for uses such as residence, transportation, industry and commerce, the essence of which is reallocation of land resources between various industries as well as the competing allocation of the two uses of land---farming land and construction land.This thesis presents and all-around analysis of the process of the non-farm land conversion in urban Wuxi City, with the aid of 3S technical platform and application of Markov transfer matrix, and "non-farm land conversion process of the developed districts and the driving force for it" as the object of analysis; then this thesis comes to the exploration of the spatial difference of non-farm land conversion in Wuxi urban area, with township, various circles, various bearing as the research perspective, using the buffer area analysis and Azimuth quadrant method; in the end, the thesis brings up proposals for regulation and control on the basis of the research results of this thesis and the actual condition of the non-farm land conversion in our country.As the major resource of land use, farm land is continuingly being depleted, transmitted to other land types in large scales, with construction land expanding from urban area to the suburban area in all direction, consuming vast area of farming land and pushing the farm land to the remote edge area of the city. Viewing from the spatial distribution of construction land transfer, the part without changes is mainly located in the downtown of Wuxi and the several administrative centers; the newly developed construction land extends from these areas to the outer area. The new construction lands mainly distributed at the edge of each administrative area.When viewed from the town domain scale, the non-farm land conversion of Wuxi City, differences presents in the scale and speed of land conversion in the towns and streets, and the rate of land conversion is classified into four types for the the 25 land units of the city, i.e. slight conversion, medium conversion, heavy conversion and severe conversion, resulting in the 4 concentric circles decreasing distributed from the urban area to the outskirt area overall. The edge of central city is the most severely converted area circle, and the severity decreases in turn toward the outer circles.The non-farm conversion presents the special distribution characteristics in different circles, i.e. inside the same buffer area, the scale of non-farm conversion increases and then decreases, the scale increasing with the distance from the downtown area and decreasing beyond some distance. The speed of conversion in the various buffer areas of downtown district presents the regularity that the more closer to the downtown area, the higher is the speed of conversion.The scale of non farm land conversion in various quadrant presents features as "big in the east and west direction and smaller in the south and north direction', the first quadrant, second quadrant, fifteen quadrant and sixteen quadrant with the relatively big-scaled non-farm land conversion and the sixth quadrant, seventh quadrant, ninth quadrant, with relatively slower speed of conversion. These quadrants are fitted administratively fitted into New District, Xishan District, and Huishan District. The speed of non farm land conversion presents features as high in the east south-west north direction and low in the east north-west south direction, and these features fit administratively with Huishan District and New District respectively.The non-farm land conversion during years from 1998～2008 in Wuxi was mainly drived by the forces as the expansion effects of central city, planning and regulation, economic development, changes in population, and comparison utilization of land. The central city, also the most active area of the district, guides the process of non-farm land conversion in the various circles. The government controls the developing pattern and orientation of the city, with planning as the main measure for regulating and controlling the non-farm land conversion process.