sustainable urban development and land use change—a case study of the yangtze river delta in china可持续城市发展和土地利用变化u2014在中国长江三角洲的案例研究.pdf

Sustainability 2011, 3, 1074-1089; doi:10.3390/su2071074 OPEN ACCESS sustainability ISSN 2071-1050 /journal/sustainability Article Sustainable Urban Development and Land Use Change—A Case Study of the Yangtze River Delta in China Haiyan Zhang 1, Michinori Uwasu 2,*, Keishiro Hara 2 and Helmut Yabar 3 1 Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 2-1 Yamada-oka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan; E-Mail: zhang_haiyan@bio.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp 2 Center of Environmental Innovation Design for Sustainability, Osaka University, 2-1 Yamada-oka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan; E-Mail: hara@ceids.osaka-u.ac.jp 3 Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Sustainable Environmental Studies, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8572, Japan; E-Mail: hyabar@jsrsai.envr.tsukuba.ac.jp * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: uwasu@ceids.osaka-u.ac.jp; Tel.: +81-6-6879-4150; Fax: +81-6-6875-6271. Received: 20 May 2011; in revised form: 30 June 2011 / Accepted: 12 July 2011 / Published: 21 July 2011 Abstract: This paper introduces a sustainability assessment method for the rapidly urbanizing Yangtze River Delta in China addressing the role of land use pattern. We first calculated the sustainability component scores of 16 cities in the area in 2000 and 2005. The results showed that socioeconomic and environmental conditions improved while the performance of resource-use degraded from 2000 to 2005. We then made a spatial analysis of land use change (LUC) using geographic information systems during 1990–20