Explore the vast range of titles available.

The pace and scale of China’s contemporary urbanization are stunning. This paper reviews process and the underlying driving forces of China’s urbanization between 1949–2015. Contemporary China’s urbanization has experienced four stages, and each has had different driving forces: 1) economic re-construction and industrialization-led urbanization (1949–1977); 2) economic reform and market-led urbanization (1978–1995); 3) economic globalization and the global-local urbanization (1996–2010); and 4) the land-economy-led urbanization (2010–). These urbanization processes and driving forces will undoubtedly provide scientific reference and have significant implications for developing countries, especially African countries, to formulate their urbanization public policies.

Urbanization has dramatically reshaped the urban landscape and intensified the urban heat island (UHI) effect in recent decades. This study investigates the spatiotemporal dynamics of UHI across 31 major Chinese cities from 2000 to 2020, using the local climate zone (LCZ) framework, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer-derived land surface temperature (LST), and machine learning models. Existing research has found significant differences in the level of UHI variation among different cities, but few studies attributing it from the perspective of urban morphology changes. We quantify urbanization processes through nine LCZ-derived indicators and assess their influence on daytime and nighttime UHI in summer. Results show that UHI intensity increased in 80.6% of cities during the day and in 77.4% at night, with over half experiencing statistically significant intensification (p < 0.05). Daytime UHI was stronger in southern cities (mean: 3.12 ∘C), while nighttime UHI was more prominent in northern regions (mean: 1.86 ∘C). Urban expansion (UE) and vegetation reduction were identified as the primary contributors to UHI intensification, with random forest and Shapley Additive exPlans analyses indicating that UE accounted for up to 28.3% of UHI variance. Functional transformation of urban areas showed mixed thermal effects, with stronger nighttime impact. High-rise (LCZ4) and mid-rise (LCZ5) building expansions were particularly linked to elevated LST. Moreover, three land use indices exhibited significant correlations with UHI trends, especially in cities with significant UHI growth. This study provides a comprehensive attribution analysis of UHI dynamics at the national scale, offering empirical evidence to guide sustainable urban planning and climate-adaptive city design.

CONTEXT: Eco-environmental effects of urbanization are a focus in landscape ecology. OBJECTIVE: The influences of population, economic and spatial development during the urbanization process in Beijing City, China on net primary productivity (NPP) were analyzed. The responding mechanism of NPP in different urbanization stages was also examined to develop advice about eco-environmental sustainability of urban development. METHODS: Using the Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach model, we estimated NPP. Using linear regression and polynomial regression analysis, we analyzed NPP responses to stages of urbanization. RESULTS: High NPP areas were located in northeast Yanqing, northwest Miyun, northern Huairou and Pinggu. The distribution of NPP generally occurred in the following order from high NPP to low NPP: outer suburbs, inner suburbs, encircled city center, and inner city. Because of the heat island effect in winter, the estimated NPP in the encircled city center and inner city was higher in 2009 than in 2001. There was a negative correlation between NPP and both economic and spatial urbanization, but an increase in population did not necessarily lead to an immediate decrease in NPP. An analysis of NPP dynamics in five kinds of urban development zones showed that urbanization resulted in a lasting and observable loss of NPP over time and space, although there was some promotion of NPP in highly urbanized zones. CONCLUSION: There are three stages in the response of NPP to urbanization: damage stage, antagonistic stage, and coordination stage. The stage threshold depends on local eco-environmental management and urban planning interventions.

All over the world, the rapid urbanization process is challenging the sustainable development of our cities. In 2015, the United Nation highlighted in Goal 11 of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) the importance to “Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. In order to monitor progress regarding SDG 11, there is a need for proper indicators, representing different aspects of city conditions, obviously including the Land Cover (LC) changes and the urban climate with its most distinct feature, the Urban Heat Island (UHI). One of the aspects of UHI is the Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI), which has been investigated through airborne and satellite remote sensing over many years. The purpose of this work is to show the present potential of Google Earth Engine (GEE) to process the huge and continuously increasing free satellite Earth Observation (EO) Big Data for long-term and wide spatio-temporal monitoring of SUHI and its connection with LC changes. A large-scale spatio-temporal procedure was implemented under GEE, also benefiting from the already established Climate Engine (CE) tool to extract the Land Surface Temperature (LST) from Landsat imagery and the simple indicator Detrended Rate Matrix was introduced to globally represent the net effect of LC changes on SUHI. The implemented procedure was successfully applied to six metropolitan areas in the U.S., and a general increasing of SUHI due to urban growth was clearly highlighted. As a matter of fact, GEE indeed allowed us to process more than 6000 Landsat images acquired over the period 1992–2011, performing a long-term and wide spatio-temporal study on SUHI vs. LC change monitoring. The present feasibility of the proposed procedure and the encouraging obtained results, although preliminary and requiring further investigations (calibration problems related to LST determination from Landsat imagery were evidenced), pave the way for a possible global service on SUHI monitoring, able to supply valuable indications to address an increasingly sustainable urban planning of our cities.

The escalating pace of urbanization and human activities presents formidable challenges to landuse patterns and ecological environments. Achieving a harmonious coexistence between humans and nature of high quality has emerged as a global imperative. Constructing an ecological security pattern has become an essential approach to mitigating the adverse ecological impacts of urban sprawl, safeguarding human well-being, and promoting the healthy development of ecosystems. Focusing on ecosystem sustainability, stability, and integrity, this study constructed the ecological security pattern in rapidly urbanizing areas, emphasizing achieving a well-balanced integration of urban expansion and ecological preservation. Ecological sources were identified by an evaluation system of “ecosystem service function–ecological sensitivity–landscape connectivity”. Resistance surfaces were constructed by integrating natural and human factors. Ecological corridors and nodes were extracted by methods such as the minimum cumulative resistance and gravity models. Taking Nanchang City as an example, the results show that there were 15 ecological sources, primarily woodland, displaying a distinct “island” phenomenon. Additionally, there were 41 ecological corridors with a combined length of 2170.54 km, exhibiting a dense distribution in the southwest and a sparse distribution in the northeast. The city was found to encompass 122 ecological nodes, predominantly situated along the corridors near the ecological sources, indicating a strong spatial aggregation pattern. An optimized ecological security pattern of “one ring, two belts, three zones, and multiple nodes” was proposed for synergizing ecological protection, restoration, and rapid urbanizing.

Based on panel data from 14 prefectures in Xinjiang from 2004 to 2022, this study employs the Super-SBM model and panel threshold regression to assess how urbanization and industrial growth influence industrial water resource utilization efficiency (IWRUE). Xinjiang exhibits a distinct “high-north–low-south” spatial pattern: Urumqi and other northern regions show continuous improvement and Tacheng maintains long-term superiority, while southern areas such as Kizilsu and Hotan remain persistently low. Although IWRUE increases overall, regional trajectories diverge considerably. Two significant thresholds are identified—industrial output value and urbanization rate. Below these thresholds, water consumption strongly suppresses IWRUE, industrial employment exerts a negative effect, and investment plays a positive role. Once the thresholds are exceeded, the negative effect of water consumption weakens, industrial employment turns positive, and investment becomes insignificant. Policy implications suggest that regions below the thresholds should strengthen investment in water-saving technologies and productive capital, whereas regions beyond the thresholds should focus on enhancing labor quality, promoting green innovation and improving refined management to stabilize IWRUE and foster coordinated regional development.

The extreme precipitation events caused by climate change and the rapid development of urbanization have brought hidden flood risks to the cities. This paper comprehensively considered two major factors of vulnerability of urban flood-bearing and disaster prevention and mitigation (DPAM) capacity and built a comprehensive evaluation index system for urban flood-bearing risks. Secondly, a combined model consisted of composite fuzzy matter-element and entropy weight model was constructed to calculate the comprehensive risk indicator. Finally, the Zhengzhou City was taken as an example, the comprehensive indices of urban flood-bearing risk from 2006 to 2015 were evaluated. The results showed that the comprehensive risk of Zhengzhou City was generally on a slow upward trend, from II level (moderate-risk) in 2006 to III level (secondary high-risk) in 2015, which was mainly due to the mismatch between the rapid development of urbanization and the slow improvement of DPAM capabilities. This paper is expected to provide scientific reference and technical support for urban flood disaster prevention and sponge city construction.

As the capital city of China, Beijing has experienced unprecedented economic and population growth and dramatic impervious surface changes during the last few decades. An application of the classification method combining the spectral and textural features based on Random Forest was conducted to monitor the spatial and temporal changes of Beijing’s impervious surfaces. This classification strategy achieved excellent performance in the impervious surface extraction in complex urban areas, as the Kappa coefficient reached 0.850. Based on this strategy, the impervious surfaces inside Beijing’s sixth ring road in 1997, 2002, 2007, 2013, and 2017 were extracted. As the development of Beijing has a special regional feature, the changes of impervious surfaces within the sixth ring road were assessed. The findings are as follows: (1) the textural features can significantly improve the classification accuracy of land cover in urban areas, especially for the impervious surface with high albedo. (2) Impervious surfaces within the sixth ring road expanded dramatically from 1997 to 2017, had three expanding periods: 1997–2002, 2002–2007, and 2013–2017, and only shrank in 2007–2013. There are different possible major driving factors for each period. (3) The region between the fifth and sixth ring roads in Beijing underwent the most significant changes in the two decades. (4) The inner three regions are relatively highly urbanized areas compared to the outer two regions. Urbanization processes in the interior regions tend to be completed compared to the exterior regions.

Urbanization and eco-efficiency are two interactive systems, contributing to sustainable urban development jointly. However, the synchronized development between them has not received sufficient attention. In light of this gap, this paper conducts an analysis on seeking the synchronized development between sustainable urbanization and eco-efficiency in the context of China. The aim of this study is to uncover the spatial and temporal performance of the synchronized relationship between urbanization process (UP) and eco-efficiency (EE) in a sample of 255 Chinese cities. To this end, entropy method, super efficiency SBM and coupling coordination degree model are employed to conduct the research analysis, covering the period of 2005 to 2019. The findings of this study reveal that (1) there is about 97% of the surveyed cities that exhibit a moderate level of coupling coordination between urbanization process and eco-efficiency (CC-UE). (2) Spatial disparities in the performance of CC-UE are evident, with cities in South and Southeast China demonstrating better CC-UE performance than their counterparts. However, this disparity has been gradually diminishing in recent years. (3) Local perspective presented an evident spatial autocorrelation within the 255 cities analyzed. These research findings provide valuable insights not only for the policy-makers and practitioners to adopt measures for achieving a synchronized development between urbanization process and eco-efficiency in the Chinese context, but also for further studies on sustainable development in the international context.

Studies on rural transformation in the context of urbanization have always analyzed it from a single linear perspective, either top-down or bottom-up. This leads to simplistic generalizations of rural transformation models and the standardization of policy implementation. Based on the TPSN analytical framework, this study adds the temporality dimension to form a more comprehensive TPSNT framework. This paper explores the complex construction of rural space in rural transformation from the five dimensions of “territory, place, scale, network and temporality“ and takes the urban village, Hongren, in Kunming City, China, as a case study to analyze the specific transformation process of a village. The research revealed the following: First, in the face of land loss caused by government land acquisition, traditional rural autonomous organizations that have been hidden under the modern governance system have been revived under the influence of traditional elites and completed bottom-up territorialization by using some “maneuver spaces “to form a spatial base for negotiation with the government. Second, the cohesion of traditional rural autonomous organizations has increased during this process, and with the help of mobile capital such as media and personal connections, they have developed social networks that transcend the spatial boundaries of villages. Third, these newly constructed social networks are used to carry out various political strategies at various scales and finally negotiated with the government to rewrite the planning plan so that the village can continue to develop and integrate into the city. Finally, the analysis of the temporal dimensions of Hongren village revealed that even within the same village, changes in the other four dimensions develop dynamically, and rural transformation is an ongoing process. Therefore, when the government deals with rural issues in the process of urbanization, it should avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. Unified policy implementation standards will have an irreversible negative impact on rural autonomous organizations.