Spatio-temporal relationships between urban growth and economic development: a case study of the Pearl River Delta of China

This paper attempts to verify and quantify relationships between economic growth and urban expansion in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), a dynamic region in southern China, during the period of rapid industrialization and urbanization from 1992 to 2001. Using a combination of remote sensing, geographical information systems (GIS), and statistical techniques, both spatial and temporal domains of these relationships were addressed. Results show that positive correlation existed between economic growth and urban built-up area for the selected investigation years 1992, 1998, and 2001 at scale of county-level, except for the two major cities in the region: Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Shenzhen and Guangzhou are identified as outliers from this linear relationship, implying that economic growth of these two cities is primarily accompanied by improvement of land-use efficiency rather than urban expansion. For the other cities, on the other hand, economic growth mainly comes from expansion of urban built-up areas. Regarding temporal change, the linearity has strengthened, and the land-use efficiency improved, though not as rapidly as the economic growth. Keywords: urban growtheconomic developmentspatio-temporal relationshipland-use efficiencyPearl River Delta Acknowledgements This manuscript is developed from a paper that won the Postgraduate Research Paper Competition organized by Hong Kong Geographical Association in 2008. The study is partially supported by the Research Fellowship provided by the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy (PKU-Lincoln Center). We are indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Notes The industrial output and population data for all the county-level administrative units in the PRD region are available upon request.