Monitoring Beijing inner city transformation from 1966 to 2010

Abstract

This paper is concerned with monitoring morphological changes in the Beijing inner city using remote sensing. The Beijing inner city contains a huge urban heritage composed of traditional courtyards (shiheyuans) and alleys (hutongs). Since the economic reform in 1978, Beijing as most of Chinese cities experiences a fast urbanization process and has to deal with the pressure of the real estate industry and historic preservation. Based on remote sensing images, we have developed a change detection method able to identify the construction of new high-rise buildings to the expense of the old districts. The results highlight the surface area of high-rise buildings has increased from 18% of Beijing inner city to 60% between 1966 and 2010. This study brings out both methodological and thematic interests: the efficiency of the proposed remote sensing approach to process heterogeneous remote sensing images and the Beijing urban transformation to the expense of the old districts.