Abstract: With the quick development of economy and urbanization since reforming and opening, some urban issues such as environment pollution, heavy traffic appeared in China and the conflicts between human and nature become sharper and sharper. As one of the developed regions in China, Jiangsu province shows the typical characteristics of rapid urbanization which increase from 13.7% to 44.7% from 1978 to 2002 and fast expanding of buildup areas which is 1.5 times in 2000 than that in 1991. Furthermore, it was found that the buildup area per capita increased to 40 m2 in small city and 17 m2 in special big city; the bigger a city scale is, the smaller the buildup area per capita. Further analysis indicates that the expansion of buildup areas resulted from the economy development, land use collocation and the exploitation areas and new city areas building since 90s. The key problems in urban land use are low efficiency use, sharp conflicts between supply and demand and so on. In order to improve this condition and carry out the sustainable development, it is suggested to strengthen the management, make the full potential of land use and increase efficiency of land use.

Key words: urbanization, urban expansion, land use, Jiangsu Province