An Analysis of Driving Forces of Urban Land Expansion——A Case Study of Hubei Province

The authors analyze the processes of urban expansion and quantify its relationship with economic development,population growth,science and technology,urban infrastructure and foreign investments during the last 8 years in Hubei Province,using single factor and multifactor analysis approaches.The results show that the total urban land areas are linearly increased in the last 8 years,and highly related to the growth of GDP and urban population of the province.Meanwhile,it points out the more detailed results:development of economy can better explain the expansion of urban land use than urban population;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 development.