Analysis Of Urban Development Based On The GIS Technology-a Case Study Of Vientiane

With Laos’s rapid economic development and urbanization, the present urban development still has many shortcomings and has many places to improve. Cities are the mainly carriers of human activities, and the development of the city planning has attracted high concerns. With Laos having come into a new crucial social transitional era, the urbanization has accelerated continually and the politics, economy, culture and other aspects have changed unprecedentedly. The urban planning should also be changed accordingly.In the21st century, at the beginning of the acceleration of urbanization of Laos, many cities are facing with development bottlenecks. And the existing urban planning is not appropriate. The urban traffic, land, water, energy, disaster management and decision making are needed to improve and ameliorate. How to seek a new technology to realize the sustainable development of the city became the main research issue in each subject, especially in the urban planning. To seek methods for solving these problems, the urban planning and policy-makers urgently want to grasp the spatial dynamic characteristics of cities and their surrounding environments more completely, accurately and comprehensively. In the late1990s to the early2000s, GIS technology has been more and more widely used in urban planning and constructions of Laos, mainly reflected in the site selection, urban planning aided-design, engineering site selection, urban planning supervision, and auxiliary decision-making, etc.The paper takes Vientiane as the research city as its special status in Laos Vientiane, the capital of Laos, has its important representative. In this paper, the data collected over the past decade, and take this advantage to use GIS technology to build Vientiane urban database system. Then analyze the development of Vientiane from population growth and distribution pattern, economic and industrial development, land use dynamic trends, division of urban functions and so on.The study found that:the proportion of urban population is very high in Vientiane, and the population growth is rapid. The population density of central urban area is highest, followed by suburbs, and rural areas are very low. Vientiane economy grew rapidly, but the industrial structure is inconsequence. Agriculture have a higher proportion in economy, and the secondary sector is promoted by infrastructure and investment. Light industry is the main part of industry. The third industry is given priority to basic services, and the tourism developing foundation is weak, so the development of the tourism is unstable. The main land use type is forest, farmland and construction land. Forest reduced fast, and the ecological environment problems are serious. Construction lands are redoubled, and the per capita is very large. Which makes the cultivated lands are occupied. Urban roads, infrastructure and public service facilities construction lags behind, and there are many urban problems. The functional divisions are clear, and the core area is the fastest developed region. Urban agglomerations are on a smaller scale, and they developed slowly. Vientiane From a single core to multi-center development still takes a long time.