The Suitability Analysis of Urban Construction Space Expansion Based on the Evaluation of Resources and Environment Carrying Capacity in Rapid Urbanization Region of China

Abstract

In order to find out suitability degree of the Resources and Environment Carrying Capacity (RECC) and the development of urbanization in rapid urbanization region of China, taking the Chenggong district of Kunming as an example, from the perspective of affecting the future urban space expansion, this paper selects 15 indexes from social economy, resource carrying and environment carrying, using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the weight of indexes, and building a comprehensive evaluation model of the RECC based on the State Space Method with the support of GIS, carrying on the quantitative calculation, grade classification, space allocation, comprehensive evaluation and the suitability analysis of the construction space expansion for the rapid urbanization region based on the evaluation results of the RECC. The results show that overall capacity of resources and environment in the study area is currently in a loadable state, but from the view of every township, the comprehensive RECC of the 10 townships in the study area presents a large spatial difference, in which Dounan already belongs to the overloaded state. The actual comprehensive value (RCC‘) of Luolong and Dayu is 0.72 and 0.70 respectively, which are close to the ideal comprehensive value (RCC) of 0.73. And the RECC is already at the maximum loading edge. While, the other seven townships are in a loadable condition. Furthermore, from the view of the suitability of urbanization space expansion in the future based on the current RECC, the suitable space for construction of the study area is mainly distribute in the three townships of Qidian, Wujiaying and Majinpu, but the suitability expansion space of the other seven townships are limited relatively. The results of the study showed that the spatial heterogeneity of urban construction space expansion under the constraints of the RECC, which can provide scientific evidence and empirical reference for the theory and practice of the optimization of urban space development pattern.