Spatial Patterns and Dynamic Mechanisms of Urban Land Use Growth in China: Case Studies in Beijing and Shanghai

Beijing and Shanghai are among those Chinese cities that have experienced substantial growth over the past decades. We analyze historic urban growth patterns in Beijing and Shanghai using detailed land use maps from different time points. For Beijing digital land use data are available for 1982, 1992 and 1997 with a scale of 1:100,000. In the case of Shanghai we use high-resolution data derived from earth observation for the years 1967, 1989 and 1999. With the implementation of economic reform and opening policy China introduced urban land reforms invoking major changes in urban growth dynamics. A conceptual framework of urban growth mechanisms in the Chinese context is presented. It includes driving forces and constraint factors and four mechanism of urban land conversion, namely administrative allocation, urban land market, unauthorized ("black") land market and land development for Town and Village Enterprises (TVEs). In Beijing industrial land expansion has been the dominant factor of urban growth. Land expansion for TVEs here is of particular importance. There are major divergences of actual urban growth patterns and those envisaged by development plans of the city. In Shanghai residential land increased significantly mostly at the expense of cultivated area. Road development was substantial. The high resolution of the land use data allows to present detailed land use conversion patterns