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Arid Land Geography ›› 2021, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (3): 867-876.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000–6060.2021.03.29

• Regional Development • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Urban expansion and its temporal and spatial driving forces of Urumqi based on geo-detector method

SHI Tiange1,2(),SHI Hui1()   

  1. 1. Xinjiang University of Finance and Economics, Urumqi 830012, Xinjiang, China
    2. Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, CAS, Urumqi 830011, Xinjiang, China
  • Received:2020-01-04 Revised:2020-12-01 Online:2021-05-25 Published:2021-06-01
  • Contact: Hui SHI E-mail:stg@xjufe.edu.cn;shihui_129@163.com

Abstract:

Urban spatial expansion is a classic topic for urban geography, playing an increasingly important role in scientific research and government management. As the internal and external development environments of China’s urban areas have changed significantly in the new era, urban expansion and its driving mechanism were also shifted by new factors. This paper, taking Urumqi (a city in northwest China) as an example, described the characteristics of urban construction land expansion and expounded on the spatiotemporal expansion mechanism using the Geodetector method. The results are as follows: (1) Over the past 30 years, the construction land area in Urumqi increased from 84.37 to 361.91 km2. We constructed an urban space compactness index to reflect the rationality of the urban spatial boundary shape. The urban space compactness index gradually decreased over the past 30 years. This indicated that the spatial distribution is more reasonable and more efficient in the process of urban expansion. The urban expansion speed rate is 5.34%, and the urban expansion intensity rate increased from 3.57% to 8.79%. Urban expansion had a “core-periphery” structure, and its core agglomeration extent changed in different periods. (2) Urban expansion is mainly influenced by three factors: population scale, economic scale, and government policy. Population and economic agglomeration have the greatest effect on urban expansion. In economic terms, the secondary sector of the urban economy plays a slightly larger role than that of the tertiary sector on urban expansion. After 2010, new government policies accelerated urban expansion in Urumqi. (3) Transportation and commercial locations were the main spatial driving factors of urban expansion. The effects of single spatial driving factors gradually weakened, whereas the interactive effects of double spatial driving factors gradually strengthened over time. In the future, comprehensive simulations of urban expansion and resource and environmental effects should be further studied for the cities in western China.

Key words: urban expansion, construction land, temporal and spatial driving forces, geo-detector, Urumqi