{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,13]],"date-time":"2026-02-13T05:55:48Z","timestamp":1770962148052,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":61,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,22]],"date-time":"2019-05-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1558483200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program)","award":["2012CB719904"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2012CB719904"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["41401513"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["41401513"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"The National Key Research and Development Program of China","award":["2016YFE0205300"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2016YFE0205300"]}]},{"name":"National Science &amp; Technology Specific Projects","award":["2012YQ1601850"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2012YQ1601850"]}]},{"name":"National Science &amp; Technology Specific Projects","award":["2013BAH42F03"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2013BAH42F03"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004602","name":"Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["NCET-12-0426"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["NCET-12-0426"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004602","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Beijing Key Laboratory of Urban Spatial Information Engineering","award":["2018202"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2018202"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["IJGI"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The urbanization level in China has increased rapidly since beginning of the 21st century, and the monitoring and analysis of urban expansion has become a popular topic in geoscience applications. However, problems, such as inconsistent concepts and extraction standards, low precision, and poor comparability, existing in urban monitoring may lead to wrong conclusions. This study selects 337 cities at the prefecture level and above in China as research subjects and uses high-resolution images and geographic information data in a semi-automatic extraction method to identify urban areas in 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015. City size distribution patterns, urban expansion regional characteristics, and expansion types are analyzed. Results show that Chinese cities maintained a high-speed growth trend from 2000 to 2015, with the total area increasing by 115.79%. The overall scale of a city continues to expand, and the system becomes increasingly complex. The urban system is more balanced than the ideal Zipf distribution, but it also exhibited different characteristics in 2005. Urban areas are mostly concentrated in the eastern and central regions, and the difference between the east and the west is considerable. However, cities in the western region continuously expand. Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangzhou are the four largest cities in China. Approximately 73.30% of the cities are expanding in an extended manner; the urban form tends to be scattered, and land use efficiency is low. The new urban areas mainly come from cultivated land and ecological land.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi8050241","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,23]],"date-time":"2019-05-23T03:22:03Z","timestamp":1558581723000},"page":"241","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":23,"title":["Spatiotemporal Pattern Analysis of China\u2019s Cities Based on High-Resolution Imagery from 2000 to 2015"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"8","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9610-408X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hanchao","family":"Zhang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430079, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Xiaogang","family":"Ning","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Photogrametry and Remote Sensing, Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping, Beijing 100830, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Zhenfeng","family":"Shao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430079, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Hao","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Photogrametry and Remote Sensing, Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping, Beijing 100830, China"},{"name":"Beijing Key Laboratory of Urban Spatial Information Engineering, Beijing 100038, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"69","DOI":"10.1080\/10095020.2016.1159389","article-title":"Remote sensing of human beings\u2014A perspective from nighttime light","volume":"19","author":"Li","year":"2016","journal-title":"Geo-Spat. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"422","DOI":"10.1016\/j.landusepol.2018.12.028","article-title":"Delimiting urban growth boundaries using the clue-s model with village administrative boundaries","volume":"82","author":"Huang","year":"2019","journal-title":"Land Use Policy"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"325","DOI":"10.1007\/s11769-018-1011-1","article-title":"Arrangement of high-standard basic farmland construction based on village-region cultivated land quality uniformity","volume":"29","author":"Song","year":"2019","journal-title":"Chin. Geogr. Sci."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"371","DOI":"10.1007\/s11783-014-0744-z","article-title":"Review of challenges and strategies for balanced urban-rural environmental protection in china","volume":"9","author":"Xi","year":"2015","journal-title":"Front. Environ. Sci. Eng."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"334","DOI":"10.1016\/j.landusepol.2015.07.025","article-title":"Challenges and the way forward in china\u2019s new-type urbanization","volume":"55","author":"Chen","year":"2016","journal-title":"Land Use Policy"},{"key":"ref_6","unstructured":"Li, D., Ma, J., Cheng, T., Genderen, J.L.V., and Shao, Z. (2018). Challenges and opportunities for the development of megacities. Int. J. Digit. Earth, 1\u201314."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Li, J., Zhang, Z., Ma, L., Gu, Q., Wang, K., and Xu, Z. (2016). Assessment on the impact of arable land protection policies in a rapidly developing region. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 5.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi5050069"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"263","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi6090263","article-title":"The ecological security pattern and its constraint on urban expansion of a black soil farming area in northeast china","volume":"6","author":"Liu","year":"2017","journal-title":"ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"179","DOI":"10.1007\/s11432-015-5396-5","article-title":"Big data in smart cities","volume":"58","author":"Li","year":"2015","journal-title":"Sci. Chin. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"197","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi5110197","article-title":"Spatiotemporal analysis of urban growth using gis and remote sensing: A case study of the colombo metropolitan area, sri lanka","volume":"5","author":"Shyamantha","year":"2016","journal-title":"ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"706","DOI":"10.1016\/j.scitotenv.2017.06.218","article-title":"Ecosystem services response to urbanization in metropolitan areas: Thresholds identification","volume":"607\u2013608","author":"Peng","year":"2017","journal-title":"Sci. Total Environ."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Rimal, B., Zhang, L.F., Keshtkar, H., Haack, B.N., Rijal, S., and Zhang, P. (2018). Land use\/land cover dynamics and modeling of urban land expansion by the integration of cellular automata and markov chain. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 7.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi7040154"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Liu, Y., Zeng, C., Cui, H.T., and Song, Y.H. (2018). Sustainable land urbanization and ecological carrying capacity: A spatially explicit perspective. Sustainability, 10.","DOI":"10.3390\/su10093070"},{"key":"ref_14","first-page":"427","article-title":"Built-up area detection from a stereo pair using disparity information","volume":"41","author":"Gong","year":"2016","journal-title":"Geomat. Inf. Sci. Wuhan Univ."},{"key":"ref_15","first-page":"196","article-title":"A clustered threshold method for extracting urban built-up area using the dmsp\/ols nighttime light images","volume":"41","author":"Zou","year":"2016","journal-title":"Geomat. Inf. Sci. Wuhan Univ."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"77","DOI":"10.1080\/10095020.2017.1333230","article-title":"Earth observation in service of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development","volume":"20","author":"Anderson","year":"2017","journal-title":"Geo-Spat. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"722","DOI":"10.1007\/s11434-013-0100-x","article-title":"From digital earth to smart earth","volume":"59","author":"Li","year":"2014","journal-title":"Chin. Sci. Bull."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1733","DOI":"10.1016\/j.rse.2010.03.003","article-title":"Mapping global urban areas using modis 500-m data: New methods and datasets based on \u2018urban ecoregions\u2019","volume":"114","author":"Schneider","year":"2010","journal-title":"Remote Sens. Environ."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"210","DOI":"10.1016\/j.rse.2012.09.011","article-title":"Landsat analysis of urban growth: How tokyo became the world\u2019s largest megacity during the last 40 years","volume":"127","year":"2012","journal-title":"Remote Sens. Environ."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"78","DOI":"10.1016\/j.rse.2015.06.007","article-title":"A 30-year (1984\u20132013) record of annual urban dynamics of beijing city derived from landsat data","volume":"166","author":"Li","year":"2015","journal-title":"Remote Sens. Environ."},{"key":"ref_21","first-page":"105","article-title":"Spatial and temporal variation and its driving forces of urban impervious surface in urban-rural continuum of harbin","volume":"72","author":"Li","year":"2017","journal-title":"Acta Geogr. Sin."},{"key":"ref_22","first-page":"659","article-title":"Compact, dispersed, fragmented, extensive? A comparison of urban growth in twenty-five global cities using remotely sensed data, pattern metrics and census information","volume":"45","author":"Woodcock","year":"2014","journal-title":"Urban Stud."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"426","DOI":"10.1016\/j.rse.2009.09.012","article-title":"Mapping megacity growth with multi-sensor data. Remote sens environ","volume":"114","author":"Griffiths","year":"2010","journal-title":"Remote Sens. Environ."},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"10143","DOI":"10.3390\/rs70810143","article-title":"Mapping us urban extents from modis data using one-class classification method","volume":"7","author":"Bo","year":"2015","journal-title":"Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1959","DOI":"10.1080\/01431160412331291297","article-title":"Glc2000: A new approach to global land cover mapping from earth observation data","volume":"26","author":"Corresponding","year":"2005","journal-title":"Int. J. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Rahman, M. (2016). Detection of land use\/land cover changes and urban sprawl in al-khobar, saudi arabia: An analysis of multi-temporal remote sensing data. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 5.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi5020015"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Di Palma, F., Amato, F., Nol\u00e8, G., Martellozzo, F., and Murgante, B. (2016). A smap supervised classification of landsat images for urban sprawl evaluation. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 5.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi5070109"},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"218","DOI":"10.1016\/j.rse.2004.06.015","article-title":"Landsat urban mapping based on a combined spectral\u2013spatial methodology","volume":"92","author":"Guindon","year":"2004","journal-title":"Remote Sens. Environ."},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"7609","DOI":"10.1080\/01431161.2012.700424","article-title":"Mapping impervious surface expansion using medium-resolution satellite image time series: A case study in the yangtze river delta, china","volume":"33","author":"Gao","year":"2012","journal-title":"Int. J. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sun, Z., Wang, C., Guo, H., and Shang, R. (2017). A modified normalized difference impervious surface index (mndisi) for automatic urban mapping from landsat imagery. Remote Sens., 9.","DOI":"10.3390\/rs9090942"},{"key":"ref_31","first-page":"100","article-title":"Urban growth mapping from landsat data using linear mixture model in ho chi minh city, vietnam","volume":"6","author":"Son","year":"2012","journal-title":"J. Appl. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"661","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2013.2274327","article-title":"Urban mapping in landsat images based on normalized difference spectral vector","volume":"11","author":"Angiuli","year":"2013","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2802","DOI":"10.1007\/s11434-012-5235-7","article-title":"China\u2019s urban expansion from 1990 to 2010 determined with satellite remote sensing","volume":"57","author":"Wang","year":"2012","journal-title":"Sci. Bull."},{"key":"ref_34","first-page":"1063","article-title":"Automatic urban area extraction using a gabor filter and high-resolution remote sensing imagery","volume":"38","author":"Chen","year":"2013","journal-title":"Geomat. Inf. Sci. Wuhan Univ."},{"key":"ref_35","first-page":"39","article-title":"Object-oriented method of hierarchical urban building extraction from high-resolution remote-sensing imagery","volume":"39","author":"Tao","year":"2016","journal-title":"Acta Geod. Cartogr. Sin."},{"key":"ref_36","first-page":"648","article-title":"A method for extracting human settlements from remote sensing image using right angle corners features","volume":"42","author":"Huan","year":"2017","journal-title":"Geomat. Inf. Sci. Wuhan Univ."},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ning, X., and Lin, X. (2017). An index based on joint density of corners and line segments for built-up area detection from high resolution satellite imagery. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 6.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi6110338"},{"key":"ref_38","first-page":"83","article-title":"Extraction of human settlements from high resolution remote sensing imagery by fusing features of right angle corners and right angle sides","volume":"46","author":"Lin","year":"2017","journal-title":"Acta Geod. Cartogr. Sin."},{"key":"ref_39","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"299","DOI":"10.1080\/10095020.2017.1403731","article-title":"Urban land-use classification by combining high-resolution optical and long-wave infrared images","volume":"20","author":"Guan","year":"2017","journal-title":"Geo-Spat. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"297","DOI":"10.1080\/10095020.2017.1404273","article-title":"Information extraction from remote sensing imagery","volume":"20","author":"Xin","year":"2017","journal-title":"Geo-Spat. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_41","first-page":"1435","article-title":"Analyzing the characteristics of the expansion of the metropolises in china from 1990 to 2010 using self-organizing neural network","volume":"39","author":"Jiao","year":"2014","journal-title":"Geomat. Inf. Sci. Wuhan Univ."},{"key":"ref_42","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2109","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi4042109","article-title":"Extracting urban land use from linked open geospatial data","volume":"4","author":"Calegari","year":"2015","journal-title":"ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf."},{"key":"ref_43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1080\/10095020.2017.1323522","article-title":"Improving global land cover characterization through data fusion","volume":"20","author":"Song","year":"2017","journal-title":"Geo-Spat. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Li, Y., Shao, H., Jiang, N., Shi, G., and Cheng, X. (2018). The evolution of the urban spatial pattern in the yangtze river economic belt: Based on multi-source remote sensing data. Sustainability, 10.","DOI":"10.3390\/su10082733"},{"key":"ref_45","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"227","DOI":"10.1016\/j.rse.2018.02.055","article-title":"High-resolution multi-temporal mapping of global urban land using landsat images based on the google earth engine platform","volume":"209","author":"Liu","year":"2018","journal-title":"Remote Sens. Environ."},{"key":"ref_46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"93","DOI":"10.1080\/10095020.2018.1455320","article-title":"A comparative study on four major cities in northeastern thailand using urban land density function","volume":"21","author":"Keeratikasikorn","year":"2018","journal-title":"Geo-Spat. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_47","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"257","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi6080257","article-title":"An internet-based gis platform providing data for visualization and spatial analysis of urbanization in major asian and african cities","volume":"6","author":"Hao","year":"2017","journal-title":"ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf."},{"key":"ref_48","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1016\/j.rse.2015.12.027","article-title":"Characterizing the magnitude, timing and duration of urban growth from time series of landsat-based estimates of impervious cover","volume":"175","author":"Song","year":"2016","journal-title":"Remote Sens. Environ."},{"key":"ref_49","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lu, H., Zhang, M., Sun, W., and Li, W. (2018). Expansion analysis of yangtze river delta urban agglomeration using dmsp\/ols nighttime light imagery for 1993 to 2012. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 7.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi7020052"},{"key":"ref_50","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chang, S., Jiang, Q., Wang, Z., Xu, S., and Jia, M. (2018). Extraction and spatial\u2013temporal evolution of urban fringes: A case study of changchun in jilin province, china. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 7.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi7070241"},{"key":"ref_51","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"210","DOI":"10.1016\/j.rse.2017.06.039","article-title":"Using multi-source geospatial big data to identify the structure of polycentric cities","volume":"202","author":"Cai","year":"2017","journal-title":"Remote Sens. Environ."},{"key":"ref_52","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"29","DOI":"10.1080\/10095020.2017.1288418","article-title":"New urban map of eurasia using modis and multi-source geospatial data","volume":"20","author":"Alsaaideh","year":"2017","journal-title":"Geo-Spat. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_53","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Zhang, J., Liu, J., Zhai, L., and Hou, W. (2016). Implementation of geographical conditions monitoring in beijing-tianjin-hebei, china. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 5.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi5060089"},{"key":"ref_54","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"290","DOI":"10.1016\/j.econlet.2014.06.002","article-title":"A comparison of city size distributions for china and india from 1950 to 2010","volume":"124","author":"Luckstead","year":"2014","journal-title":"Econ. Lett."},{"key":"ref_55","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3859","DOI":"10.3390\/su7043859","article-title":"Quantitative diagnoses and comprehensive evaluations of the rationality of chinese urban development patterns","volume":"7","author":"Fang","year":"2015","journal-title":"Sustainability"},{"key":"ref_56","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4","DOI":"10.1029\/2008GL035163","article-title":"Investigating the rank-size relationship of urban areas using land cover maps","volume":"35","author":"Kinoshita","year":"2008","journal-title":"Geophys. Res. Lett."},{"key":"ref_57","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2118","DOI":"10.1177\/0042098012470397","article-title":"Searching for the parallel growth of cities in china","volume":"50","author":"Chen","year":"2013","journal-title":"Urban Stud."},{"key":"ref_58","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"930","DOI":"10.3390\/rs8110930","article-title":"Forms of urban expansion of chinese municipalities and provincial capitals, 1970s\u20132013","volume":"8","author":"Fang","year":"2016","journal-title":"Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_59","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Zhou, Y., Tu, M., Wang, S., and Liu, W. (2016). A novel approach for identifying urban built-up area boundaries using high-resolution remote-sensing data based on the scale effect. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 7.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi7040135"},{"key":"ref_60","first-page":"81","article-title":"High accuracy urban expansion monitoring and analysis of china\u2019s provincial capitals from 2000 to 2015 based on high-resolution remote sensing imagery","volume":"73","author":"Zhang","year":"2018","journal-title":"Acta Geogr. Sin."},{"key":"ref_61","first-page":"711","article-title":"The spatial-temporal pattern analysis of city development in countries along the belt and road initiative based on nighttime light data","volume":"42","author":"Li","year":"2017","journal-title":"Geomat. Inf. Sci. Wuhan Univ."}],"container-title":["ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2220-9964\/8\/5\/241\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T12:54:13Z","timestamp":1760187253000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2220-9964\/8\/5\/241"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,22]]},"references-count":61,"journal-issue":{"issue":"5","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,5]]}},"alternative-id":["ijgi8050241"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/ijgi8050241","relation":{},"ISSN":["2220-9964"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2220-9964","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,22]]}}}