The trajectories of urban land and industrial land in Shanghai over the past 30 years

With regional economy development and the changes of urban development strategies, Shanghai experienced a distinct land use change process during the past 30 year. To explore the spatial pattern and temporal dynamics of urban land and industrial land over the past years, two independent datasets from multitemporal satellite images based on interpretation with computer-aids and object-oriented classification methods were employed in this study. Preliminary study indicated that Shanghai's urban land experienced continuous increases over the past 30 years. The total urban area of Shanghai increased from 146.1km2 to 1121.3km² during 1979–2007, with an annual urban expansion area of 34.8km² per year. The rate of urban expansion, however, was not homogeneous spatially and temporally. The expanded area in the Puxi region was 5.23 times of its original area while that of Pudong region was 19.94 times of its original area. Within the extent of 1979's urban land distribution, the total area of industrial land and warehouses was 14.7 km² in 1966 and 16.8 km² in 2007, with the ratio of the industrial land to the whole territory increased from 10.1% to 11.5%. The sizes of industrial land patches within the boundary decreased with the total industrial land area and the number of industrial patches increased. Moreover, the average size of industrial land in the Pudong region (1.6–2.0ha) was larger than that in the Puxi region (1.1–1.8ha). The trajectories of urban land and industrial land in Shanghai can be well explained by the policies of the national and the local government.