Research on the Development of “Ghost City” Based on Night Light Data: Taking Sichuan Province as an Example

Abstract

Due to the improvement of urbanization level and unreasonable development in China, many cities have begun to appear as “Ghost City”; that is, the phenomenon of high vacancy rate and low occupancy rate in urban areas. The emergence of this phenomenon will seriously affect the healthy development of cities. Therefore, the monitoring and analysis of the urban “Ghost City” index is of great significance to urban population and urban construction. This paper uses Landsat8 remote sensing image data, night light remote sensing image data, and resident population data of various cities and counties in Sichuan Province to calculate the “Ghost City” index, and obtains the “Ghost City” Index of prefecture-level cities and county-level cities in Sichuan Province. Based on the judgment criteria of the Ghost City, the calculation results show that three cities have become “Ghost City” within the research scope; eight cities have a tendency to develop into “Ghost City”; the rest of the cities have developed well and there has not been a “Ghost City” phenomenon. According to this conclusion, this paper studies the similarities and differences between the cities that are the ghost towns or the cities with the development trend of ghost towns, analyzes the reasons for the formation of ghost towns and makes suggestions for the urbanization of Sichuan Province, and provides reference for the direction of urban development and rational planning.