Analysis of construction land expansion during the urbanization process in Dongguan city

This paper takes Dongguan City as an example, which is one of the most important cities in Pearl River Delta. First, data on the variation of construction land in Dongguan are obtained by employing the statistic and analytic function of construction of GIS on the spatial data from remote sensing image data in different periods. Then the characteristics of construction land expansion are identified by using several methods in analyzing the spatial-temporal features of Dongguan City from 1988 to 2002, which include expansion area, expansion speed, expansion intensity index and transformation matrix index. The driving force of construction land expansion and its comprehensive evaluation are given in this paper by using social economical data and correlation analysis. The results obtained show that, during the last 15 years, the area of construction land has almost been obvious during the 1988~1995 period. The growth in different districts was obviously diversified and the main directions of City expansion are northeast and southwest; more arable land and developing land were occupied by construction land expansion. The economic growth is the decisive factor influencing the urban construction land expansion, and the correlative policies direction the economic growth run through the urban growth from beginning to end.