Abstract
Municipal district expansion and built-up area expansion are two main forms in urban spatial expansion. In China, the two processes are very drastic and unstable under high-speed urbanization. Geographical time-space stability emphasizes both time and space. With the help of geometry, this paper constructs a coordinate system of the standardized built-up area and municipal district area. Furthermore, the paper draws the spatial expansion path of some main prefecture cities from 2000 to 2010 and classifies the paths by the standardized mean value. Finally, three indexes called mov, tor and sd are given to calculate time-space stability. The study shows (1) Since 2000, municipal district expansion mainly happens in Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, southeast of Fujian and the provincial capitals of mid-west areas as well as the surrounding cities which are close to these capitals. However, built-up area expansion doesn’t show the obvious polarization effect and each urban agglomeration’s own high speed. (2) The types of time-space path can be divided into stable type and crossing type. Most of the stable types are Low Low which means both municipal district and built-up area are under the mean value. And most of the cities which transfer its type only have one time change among four types. (3) Those cities which are high ranked are sensitive to mov and sd, both of which keep consistent characteristics between the cities and the whole nation. But those cities which are middle ranked are sensitive to tor which reflects an obvious change when a city carries out an administrative division adjustment in different years.
