The delineation of urban growth boundaries in complex ecological environment areas by using cellular automata and a dual-environmental evaluation

Urban growth boundaries are an efficient tool for protecting non-urban land uses from being dominated by urban sprawl and can promote sustainable urban development. Previous studies have explored the use of a cellular automata simulation and its visualization products in delimiting future UGBs. However, existing CA-UGB delineation models lack a transcendental component for ecological evaluation and are difficult to apply to areas with complex ecological environments or heterogeneous resource endowments. Therefore, this paper introduces an innovative model by coupling the dual-environmental evaluation and the Future Land-use Simulation CA model for delimiting future UGBs. To prioritize ecological protection, some intermediate products of the DEE are processed as pivotal components in the CA simulations. Strict urban simulation constraints are also applied in the FLUS model to meet the DEE regulations and prioritize ecological protection. This model was implemented to plan future UGBs in Chungking, China. After quantifying and comparing the proposed UGB scheme with other UGB delineations of Chungking by using various landscape metrics, the DEE-UGBs show a stronger ability to manage urban patches via aggregation with the simultaneous reconciliation of contradictions among land uses. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.