Modeling different urban growth patterns based on the evolution of urban form: A case study from Huangpi, Central China

Spatial patterns of urban expansion mainly include infilling, edge expansion, and outlying growth patterns. The cellular automata (CA) model, is an important spatio-temporal dynamic model and effectively simulates infilling and edge-expansion urban expansion, but is evidently lacking in outlying scenarios. In addition, CA cannot explain the causes and processes of urban land expansion. Given these limitations, we proposed a novel urban expansion model called simulation model of different urban growth pattern (SMDUGP), which can work well in both adjacent (i.e., infilling and edge expansion) and outlying growth patterns. SMDUGP has two main components. First, we divided the non-urban region into two categories, namely, candidate region for adjacent pattern urban growth (CRFAP) and candidate region for outlying pattern urban growth (CRFOP). Second, different methods were utilized to simulate urban expansion in the different categories. In CRFAP, a CA model based on the potential of urban growth was proposed to simulate urban growth in relatively randomly selected urban growth regions based on the discrete selection model and Monte Carlo method as the expansion area was implemented in CRFOP. Huangpi, a suburban area in Wuhan, is utilized as the case study area to simulate the spatial and temporal dynamics of urban growth from 2004 to 2024. SMDUGP can effectively simulate outlying urban growth with a highly improved simulation precision compared with the traditional CA model and can explain the causes and processes of urban land expansion. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.