Abstract:

China has been undergoing rapid urbanization in the past two decades. As the same time, drastic changes that highway length and density increased by several times has taken place in the road traffic. The development of road traffic plays a facilitative role in urbanization while urbanization will promote transportation construction in turn. However, road development also brings a series of problems such as landscape fragmentation. Landscape fragmentation caused by road construction is a phenomenon that roads divide the lands into isolated parcels. Generally, landscape fragmentation caused by road building will be aggravated with urban expansion. Therefore, it is important to understand the relationship between road traffic and urbanization. Based on RS and GIS technology, Landsat TM/ETM+ data were used to carry out multi-level spatial statistical analysis from 1989 to 2008 in Nanjing. The results showed that, the structures and spatial forms of traffic network and urban areas varied in different periods. From 1989 to 1999, a disordered construction took place as a result of rapid urban development. The boundaries of urban space became complex while fractal dimension of traffic network declined. On the other hand, from 1999 to 2008, subject to the increasingly stringent city planning, boundaries of urban space tended to be compact and regular, as well as structures of traffic network grew mature and stable. To some extent, fragmentation due to the road construction can reflect the intensity of urbanization. Degree of fragmentation and urbanization intensity showed significant spatial dependence, and this phenomenon appeared to be more obvious with time. Besides, as they both represented spatial expansion of the city, they showed a strong resemblance. In the area with a high degree of urbanization, the influences of artery traffic on the urban land use did not show the trend that power of influence diminishes with distance decreasing. Conversely, the urban land use intensity did not appear to be different with each other. Only in the new built areas such as New District of Pukou, the influences of artery traffic on the urban land use come to a character of power of influence diminishes with distance decreasing. Therefore, the relationship between road traffic and city land use showed a different character in the areas of different degree of urbanization. In addition, in view of different trend and pattern shown in different period, temporal heterogeneity is also required to be taken account in the research. The structure and pattern of transportation network, with which a city develops and expands as the framework, influence the spatial form and internal composition of the city. And it is so important to the sustainable development of a city that transportation construction planning should be carried out scientifically and reasonably.〖