Analyzing spatiotemporal characteristics of the historical urbanization process is essential in understanding the dynamics of urbanization and scientifically planned urban development. Based on historical urban area maps and remote sensing images, this study examined the urban expansion of Shenyang from 1910 to 2010 using area statistics, typology identification, and landscape metrics approache...

China’s southeast coastal areas have witnessed rapid growth in the last two decades, owing mostly to their economic and social attractions. In this paper, we chose Jimei, a coastal peri-urban district of Xiamen city on the southeast coast of China, as a study area to explore the district’s growth dynamics, to predict future sprawl during the next decade and to provide a basis for urban planning...

As the most populous economy in the world, China has experienced an unprecedented pace of urbanization since the start of its economic reforms in the late 1970s. The rapid urbanization was accompanied by large flows of rural to urban migration and a growing demand for a clearer specification of the rural land ownership. Since the 2000s, when the conventional restrictions on rural to urban migra...

According to UN forecasts, global population will increase to over 8 billion by 2025, with much of this anticipated population growth expected in urban areas. In China, the scale of urbanization has, and continues to be, unprecedented in terms of magnitude and rate of change. Since the late 1970s, the percentage of Chinese living in urban areas increased from ~18% to over 50%. To quantify these...

We exploit regional variation in suitability for cultivating potatoes, together with time variation arising from their introduction to the Old World from the Americas, to estimate the impact of potatoes on Old World population and urbanization. Our results show that the introduction of the potato was responsible for a significant portion of the increase in population and urbanization observed d...

UNLABELLED At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the total world population crossed the threshold of 1 billion people for the first time in the history of the homo sapiens sapiens. Since then, growth rates have been increasing -exponentially, reaching staggeringly high peaks in the 20th century and slowing down a bit thereafter. Total world population reached 7 billion just after 2010 and...

If current trends of declining fertility rates and increasing abandonment of rural land as a result of urbanization continue, this will signal a globally significant transformation with important consequences for policy makers interested in conservation planning. This transformation is presently evident in a number of countries and projections suggest it may occur in the future in many developi...