Urban expansion and growth boundaries in an oasis city in an arid region: A case study of jiayuguan city, China

Abstract

China is undergoing rapid urbanization, which has caused undesirable urban sprawl and ecological deterioration. Urban growth boundaries (UGBs) are an effective measure to restrict the irrational urban sprawl and protect the green space. However, the delimiting method and control measures of the UGBs is at the exploratory stage in China. In this paper, a cellular automata model based on multi-criteria evaluation (MCE-CA) was proposed to delimit the UGBs. The MCE-CA model considers influencing factors related to urban growth and generates UGBs based on spatiotemporally dynamic simulations. The MCE-CA model was applied to generate the UGBs of Jiayuguan City in 2020 and 2030, the results show that the simulation accuracy is higher than 0.8 and the compactness increases to 0.23, which demonstrates that the MCE-CA model is an effective model for delimiting UGBs. Moreover, the MCE-CA model can corporate the contradiction between environmental protection and urban development, promoting urban smart growth and sustainable development. UGBs is an effective tool for China to realize ecological civilization construction and improve the spatial governance ability, and the MCE-CA model can be used to assist planners in delimiting future UGBs, this study provides a methodological reference for future research of UGBs in Chinese cities.