State Spatial Selectivity and Its Impacts on Urban Sprawl: Insights from Remote Sensing Images of Zhuhai

摘要

This research unfolds a fuller picture of how state spatial selectivity (SSS) impacts Chinese urban growth through a case study of Zhuhai. Processing remote date image, three stages of Zhuhai's urban sprawl were identified: from germinal, gradualist increase under neoliberal decentralization and sustainable orientation, to expansion surge with amplified scalar restructuring and garden city ideology, to fluctuant growth shaped by multiscalar restructuring and urban livability. There are two main contributions. First, using remote sensing and GIS, this study quantifies the interdigitated spatial effects of SSS. Second, it enriches our understanding towards SSS and green growth by disentangling their relations and unraveling their evolving modalities in urban sprawl. We argue that SSS is crucial impetus touching off periodic, multiscalar rescaling to spur the increment of urban land while sustainability idea regulates the pace and intensity of urban growth and has nurtured out a livable Zhuhai. In this regard, urban growth in Zhuhai is modest compared with its peers in Pearl River Delta (PRD) region and displays periodic, multiscale characteristics. The main growth area in Zhuhai is oscillatory between east and west that a polycentric structure starts to emerge. The research also suggests that while SSS in China is mostly growth-oriented, a shrink-oriented SSS in the West has started to emerge.