Fuzzy Urban Sets Theory and Application to Desakota Regions in China

This paper outlines a method for using the mathematics of fuzzy sets that is well suited to measure and characterize peri-urbanizing (“desakota”) systems typical of China, Southeast Asia, and other areas experiencing rapid urbanization. Drawing on Kosko’s “fuzzy hypercube”, three distinct but interdependent measures are derived: (i) extent of urbanization, (ii) level of fuzziness, and (iii) degree of entropy. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated using remote sensing data for Ningbo, China. * The research presented here was undertaken in part while Eric Heikkila was a Visiting Fullbright Scholar at Peking University, and support from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars is gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful for supplementary funding from USC’s Center for International Studies and the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate to support additional collaboration on this research vital to finalizing this draft. Bart Kosko of USC, Terry McGee of University of the British Columbia, and Anthony Yeh of the University of Hong Kong provided valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this paper, as did participants at seminars organized respectively by the Department of Geography at Hong Kong Baptist University, the Department of Geography at Nanjing University, and the Tokyo Development Forum. Wu Bo provided insightful computer programming assistance. Finally, we are grateful to Michael Batty and three anonymous referees for helpful suggestions. We fully retain the usual responsibilities of authorship. All correspondence should be addressed to first author. forthcoming 2002, Environment & Planning B: Planning and Design, vol. 29