Applying Sleuth for Simulating and Assessing Urban Growth Scenario Based on Time Series Tm Images: Referencing to a Case Study of Chongqing, China

This research simulates the urban growth and therefore the landscape change of a mountain city of Chongqing, China through a Cellular Automata (CA) based model of SLEUTH. The fundamental data were four Landsat TM images of 1978, 1988, 1993, and 2001 which were utilized for generating maps of land use, road networks, and urbanized area. Three alternative development scenarios, including business as usual, compact city and decentralized concentration, were interpreted into the model to reveal urban development mechanism in a mountain environment and to decide on the optimal planning scenario. Business as usual assumes historical development would continue. Compact city aims to achieve a compact and continuous urban form. Decentralized concentration promotes polycentric urban structure. Consequence, especially ecological consequence, was assessed by a proposed selection of landscape metrics. The result exhibits several interesting findings which provide planners with significant implications in physical planning. First, it was noted that predominant urbanization modes in mountain regions were “spread”, indicating that new developments usually occurred at the edge of existing urban areas. Second, “breed” indicating that emerging small and sporadic urban patches easily become new growing poles and induce new developments was another major growth mode. Moreover, setting limitation to development on steep slopes has largely restricted urban expansion and effectively protected forests. However, it was also suggested that there exists no optimal scenario as urban development and nature conservation are conflicting goals in terms of the selected landscape metrics.