AN ANALYSIS OF DRIVING FORCES OF URBAN LAND EXPANSION IN CHINA

This paper analyzes the processes of urban expansion and quantifies its relationship with economic development and population growth during the last 15 years in China, using partial correlation and regression approaches. The results show that the total urban land areas are linearly increased in the last 15 years, and highly related to the growth of GDP and urban population of the whole country, and land requirement for the improvement of urban environment. The more detailed results include that: firstly, during the last 15 years, the land areas of urban built - up area annually go up in the speed of about 850km2; secondly, in the case of controlling for variable of ln( GDP) , the partial correlation coefficient between the areas of urban built - up area and urban population is only 0,0197; on the contrary, in the case of controlling for variable of urban population, the partial correlation coefficient between the land area of urban built - up areas and In( GDP) is 0.6335. So, development of economy can better explain the expansion of urban land use than urban population; thirdly, the economy development is the strongest driving force on the urban land expansion, it can not only directly drive the expansion of urban land use, but also indirectly affect it through urban population and urban environment.