Abstract: Based on the multitemporal remotelysensed data of TM, the evolvement, transformation and related spatial mechanism of urban landuse in Shanghai in the past decade were analyzed by map algebra and the spatial analysis (i.e, neighboring analysis). The results indicate that:(1)Agricultural landuse acted as a key contributor to the overall urban landuse growth in the past decade in Shanghai Region. (2)“Shrubs & fallows” is a unique landuse type produced from the interface between the agricultural and urban landuse types. As an indicator in the growth of urban landuse, the quantity, distribution and turnover rate of this landuse type can to some degree characterize the growth rate and spatial distribution of developing zones. (3)These landuse types with larger area and less transforming frequencies exhibited strong spatial pattern and spatial affiliation to other landuse types, and formed the framework of regional urbanization, “Multicore expanding” around Shanghai Central City and its subcities as well as the “pointaxes expanding” around satellite towns and main transportation lines dominate the modes in process of urban growth and urban landuse expanding. (4)Shanghai Central City and its main subcities showed high efficiency and intensity in the urban landuse development. In contrast, other medium or small towns have in general experienced high frequent and complicated process in landuse transformation, and presented low intensity in landuse, thus their urban landuse expanding process tends to be spatially scattered to some degree.

Key words: Shanghai Region, urban landuse, spatiotemporal dynamics, neighboring analysis, spatial interaction mechanism