Analysis Of Urban Sprawl Characteristics And Its Driving Force

Urbanization is an inevitable product with the social and economical development. The present world, especially in the developing countries, the whole society is going through an unprecedented city-enlarging process. It is estimated that by2025,80%of people will have lived in cites. There is no doubt that urbanization has become one of important ways human beings activities change the natural environment.The present explosive urban growth not only can be measured with the increasing of construction land, but also expressed in other aspects, such as economy, population, and traffic. Fist of all urbanization is the growth of cities in space and areas. Then the great population transfer from country to city and swift industrial development. With the high development of urbanization, there appears such the number of inevitable problems as good farm occupied, instruction land enlarging out of order, heavy and mixed traffic congestion and urban population expansion.Based on analyzing and summarizing the similar research both at home and overseas, this article chooses Lanzhou city’s urban centre, a typical stream valley basin, as survey region. By making use of remote sensing technique and the spatial analysis method of the geographical information system, the paper analyzes urban sprawls in different periods. This paper takes Lanzhou as the study field, uses1994LandsatTM,1999and2006year’s LandsatETM+materials, takes out useful information for land use, and then gets the data about the quantity change rate, and urbanization intensity on Lanzhou city’s land use, and finally analyzes1994-2006years’propulsive effort in urban sprawl.