Impacts of rail transit in Shanghai on its urban land use change.
上海轨道交通对城市土地利用变化的影响

By using the land use data interpreted with 1:50,000 color-infrared aerial photos of Shanghai collected in 1989 and 2005, and based on Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques, the impacts of urban rail transit (URT) development in Shanghai on its urban land use change was quantitatively analyzed, and a preliminary prediction of the land use change from 2010 to 2025 was made with Markov probability models. The results showed that the URT accelerated the land use change, particularly from an agricultural dominated natural landscape in 1989 to a high-value man-made urban landscape primarily composed of residence and public facilities. URT increased the land use rate in the study area. From 1989 to 2005, public facility land, green space, agriculture land, land for other uses (primarily used for construction), and water area changed greatly, with the greatest change rate of the land for other uses and the lowest one of water area. From 2010 to 2025, the areas and proportions of agriculture land and water area would keep on decreasing, while those of man-made landscapes including residence and public facilities would increase continuously. From the viewpoints of increasing land use rate and its gain, the present land use structure along Shanghai URT should be further regulated to improve the intensive and sustainable use of land resources.