Extracting Land Use Change Patterns of Rural Town Settlements with Sequence Alignment Method

Senkai Xie, Wenjia Zhang, Yi Zhao and Tong De
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Senkai Xie: School of Urban Planning & Design, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China
Wenjia Zhang: School of Urban Planning & Design, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China
Yi Zhao: School of Urban Planning & Design, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China
Tong De: School of Urban Planning & Design, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 2, 1-17

Abstract: Understanding land use change patterns of rural town settlements (RTSs) is crucial for rural and small-town planning; however, few studies have explored pattern mining approaches to RTS trajectory analysis. In this study, we adopted a novel method by building sequence alignment method (SAM) to detect representative trajectory clusters of land use change of 1158 RTSs in seven waves from 1980 to 2015 in Guangdong, China. The results suggest that there are 10 clusters of RTSs with varying trajectories of land use change, implying their differences in the development processes and underlying socioeconomic, demographical, and institutional factors. A spatial distribution map of RTSs shows that stable cultivated ecological and stable ecologically dominant RTSs are distributed in the northern, eastern, and western parts of Guangdong, whereas stable rural construction and stable mixed construction RTSs are mostly located around the provincial boundary. Notably, 73% of the RTSs that have undergone changes in land use types are located in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), including urbanized and agricultural upgraded RTSs. The analysis presented here summarizes the driving forces of the spatial evolution of RTSs, including the location, landforms, industries, and policy factors. This study provides dynamic policy implications to understand longitudinal and sequential spatial restructuring and regional coordinated development in the fast-growing PRD area.

Keywords: rural town settlements (RTSs); land use; spatial evolution; sequence alignment method (SAM) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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