Relationship Between Population Urbanization and Urban Sprawl Across Different City Sizes in China

In this study, a coordination model based on the data of urban population and built-up areas from 2006 to 2015 is used to assess the relationship between population urbanization and urban sprawl across 654 cities in Mainland China. For analysis, 654 cities are divided into five categories (small city, medium city, large city, super city and mega city) and the relationship between population urbanization and urban sprawl is divided into four types (rapid growth of population, rapid expansion of land, shrinkage of population and land and coordinated development between population and land). The results show that 60.6% of cities are rapid expansion of land, 18.5% are rapid growth of population, 14.1% are shrinkage of population and land and only 6.9% of cities are coordinated development between population and land. Small, medium, large and super cities were characterized by rapid expansion of land, while mega cities featured rapid growth of population. The size of the cities decreased mainly because of the shrinkage of people and land while it increased because of the rapid expansion of land. The cities with shrinkage of population and land, and rapid growth of population are mostly distributed in the east of the Hu Line.