Urban Spatial-Temporal Dynamic Pattern in Xiamen Multi-center Metropolitan Area

With the rapid development of urbanization process in China,many cities have become increasingly multi-center metropolitan regions.The construction of edge towns or satellite towns has been new paths to evacuate the population and share some functions of the central cities.Owing to the obstruction of mountains,historical transformation and growth of new centers,Xiamen has taken on a multi-center spatial structure.As one of the Special Economic Zones in China with rapid economic development,the urbanization process of Xiamen metropolitan area has been rapid.In the paper,by using three period Landsat Thematic Mapper images to acquire the information in 1990,1995 and 2000,urban land percentage,patch density,mean patch size,edge density and connectivity index are taken to study the urban patch model in 2000 and the spatial-temporal dynamic pattern of the six centers in the city during 1990-2000.The results show that:urban land use outspread rapidly during 1990-1995,but the expanding speed became slow during 1995-2000;because of the difference of landform and development stages in different centers,the regional land use outspread had different characteristics in different center areas.It is expected that urbanization process would lead to the urban spatial pattern transformation.