Delimiting Urban Growth Boundary through Combining Land Suitability Evaluation and Cellular Automata

Qing Zheng, Xuan Yang, Ke Wang, Lingyan Huang, Amir Reza Shahtahmassebi, Muye Gan and Melanie Valerie Weston
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Qing Zheng: Institute of Agriculture Remote Sensing and Information Technology, College of Environment and Natural Resource, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Xuan Yang: Institute of Agriculture Remote Sensing and Information Technology, College of Environment and Natural Resource, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Ke Wang: Institute of Agriculture Remote Sensing and Information Technology, College of Environment and Natural Resource, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Lingyan Huang: Institute of Agriculture Remote Sensing and Information Technology, College of Environment and Natural Resource, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Amir Reza Shahtahmassebi: Institute of Agriculture Remote Sensing and Information Technology, College of Environment and Natural Resource, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Muye Gan: Institute of Agriculture Remote Sensing and Information Technology, College of Environment and Natural Resource, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Melanie Valerie Weston: Institute of Agriculture Remote Sensing and Information Technology, College of Environment and Natural Resource, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 12, 1-22

Abstract: China’s domestic urban planning only worked on researches of urban space control, the scope definition of urban development is not clear enough. The purpose of this study is to present a new urban growth boundary (UGB) delimitation method which combined land suitability evaluation (LSE) and cellular automata (CA). This method gave credence to LSE’s advantage in sustainable land use, and CA’s advantage in objective dynamic simulation. The ecological limitation areas were defined by LSE, which were regarded as the restricted areas of urban growth; meanwhile, it was taken as an important model input to guide intensive land allocation in urban growth model (CA model). The future urban growth scenarios were predicted by CA model and the corresponding UGB lines were delineated by ArcGIS 10.1. The results indicated that this method had good performance in Ningbo’s urban growth simulation. When compared to the planned UGB in urban master planning, the simulated UGBs under port development and regulated scenarios showed more intensive and suitable spatial layout of land. Besides, the simulated UGB under regulated scenario had the most reasonable space structure and the largest ecological protection effect among the UGBs. Hence, the simulated UGBs were superior to the planned UGB. The study recommends that this UGB delimitation method can promote sustainability of land development and ecological environment in Chinese cities.

Keywords: urban growth boundary; land suitability evaluation; cellular automata; urban growth scenario; sustainable land use; spatial-temporal simulation; Ningbo (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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