LAUSR

Urban sprawl is a major factor that threatens the loss of arable landmass, and its evolving morphology has long interested numerous scholars. However, existing research on this study has not been concerned with the cases of ordinary cities, particularly their intra-urban land and urban sprawl. This study goes beyond mega-/super-cities and takes Zhuhai, an ordinary large city in China’s Pearl River Delta (PRD) region, as a case. Through remote sensing and GIS technology, this research identifies the increasing built-up areas and its sub-typologies (infill, outlying and edge-expansion), distinguishes the reclamation area and the decreasing arable landmass and evaluates the rate of land-use inside its five districts from 1980 to 2015. The growth of urban areas and loss of arable landmass are uneven inside Zhuhai. The most uneven outlying and infill growth were observed from 1990 to 1995 and from 2013 to 2015, respectively. Edge-expansion is the least imbalanced typology and reached its minimum from 2010 to 2013. The extent of variability of the total urban sprawl generally accords with that of edge-expansion and imbalance of arable landmass loss that reached a peak from 2005 to 2008. However, policy, planning and other factors that matter in urban sprawl are also discussed.