Chinese Geographical Science 2007 17(1) 019–027 DOI: 10.1007/s11769-007-0019-8 www.springerlink.com Urban Spatial Restructuring in Transitional Economy —Changing Land Use Pattern in Shanghai XU Jiangang 1 , LIAO Banggu 1 , SHEN Qing 2 , ZHANG Feng 2 , MEI Anxin 3 (1. Department of Urban and Resources Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China; 2. Urban Studies and Planning Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA; 3. Department of Geography, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China) Abstract: For almost three decades, China has been undergoing significant transition from a planned economy to a market economy. Fast-paced economic growth and urbanization, interacting with market-oriented reforms in land re- sources allocation, have caused profound spatial restructuring of Chinese cities. This paper examines urban expansion and land use reconfiguration in Shanghai’s central city from 1979 to 2002, with a special focus on the effect of the adoption of the land-leasing system in 1988. The empirical research, which employs GIS-based spatial analysis tech- niques to explore land use data for multiple years, indicates fundamental changes in the spatial characteristics of urban development in Shanghai after this important land policy reform. Keywords: land use pattern; land policy; GIS; Shanghai; China 1 Introduction Since the late 1970s, the reform and opening-up policy has guided China’s transition from a planned economy to a market economy. Radical changes have taken place in Chinese cities during this economic transition. These changes are reflected in the land use pattern, which is the most prominent physical manifestation of urban structure. Many scholars, both in China and abroad, have studied land use change in Chinese cities over the past two and a half decades and its driving forces. The large volume of literature discusses a wide range of relevant demographic, economic, social, and policy factors. Fast-paced urbani- zation and economic growth, motorization, the emergence of labor markets, globalization and the restructuring of urban economy, policy reforms in land allocation and housing provision, and government decentralization are considered as the major forces behind the spatial trans- formation of cities in China (Dowall, 1993; Leaf, 1998; Shen, 1997; Wu, 1999; Yeh and Wu, 1996; Zhang, 2000; Feng and Zhou, 2003; Li et al., 2003; Wang et al., 2005; Wu and Jiang, 2000; Fang and Yao, 2000; Wu and Ren, 1999; Hou and Peng, 1997). However, partly because of difficulty in access to detailed land use data, most previous studies in this subject area relied on highly ag- gregated statistics, limited case studies of development projects, or casual observations. More systematic and dis- aggregated investigation can help further the understand- ing of the ongoing spatial restructuring in Chinese cities. In this paper, we examine the spatial restructuring of Shanghai, China’s largest and economically most im- portant city. The research objective is to systematically analyze the changing land use pattern and its relationship with land policy reforms, especially the adoption of the land-leasing system in 1988. To achieve this objective, we employ GIS-based analytical techniques to explore land use data of Shanghai from 1979 to 2002. The em- pirical research investigates two basic dimensions of the changing land use pattern: 1) expansion of the urbanized area, and 2) reconfiguration of urban land use. 2 Methodology The spatial evolution of a city usually involves two processes. One is the outward expansion of urbanized area driven by urbanization and economic growth, and the other is internal reorganization of land use in corre- spondence to urban functional and structural adjustments. Received date: 2006-06-15; accepted date: 2006-12-28 Foundation item: Under the auspices of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 40371038) Corresponding author: XU Jiangang. E-mail: xjgang@sh163.net