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The identification of urban area is a basic study on urban economic, social development and urbanization process.
Population density is a widely used indicator for urbanized area analysis in most countries such as the United States and
Japan, while some countries such like the UK, employ the land use types as a significant difference to distinguish urban
and rural areas. China has taken urban population as a basic statistic of urbanization study, but a universal way of
identification urbanized area is still in search. After a brief summarization and compare of various methods about urban
area identification both in China and abroad and taking both administrative and academic aspects into consideration, this
paper puts forward a new method called "three-factor analysis" which is appropriate for China's land use actuality.
Taking village as the basic analysis unit, Three-factor here refers to the density of construction, the ownership of land
and the performance of infrastructure. Then we design three indicators to quantify the factors above. They are proportion
of construction land, proportion of state-owned construction land and the performance of infrastructure. Some kinds of
construction land are defined as Basic Construction Land (BCL) and the calculation of two indicators is based on it. All
the three indicators will be calculated in the village unit and the urbanized area will be determined according to the
calculated result of these indicators. The standards of the indicators according to which a unit will be determined as
urban or rural area are formed by three steps . First, a determinate urbanized area is units that are defined as blocks by the
local administration. The rest units are called the pending area that is waiting to be identified. Second, calculate the
indicator value of the determinate urbanized area and sort them in a ascending sequence. Third, to avoid influence of
possible abnormal unit, we choose the value of 5% position in the sequence from the beginning as a standard. The paper
then practises the method in Chaoyang district in the east of Beijing which is a quickly developing area for decades,
using GIS tools to calculate and perform the urbanized area that is identified in this "three-factor analysis" way. In the
end a brief description of the ongoing land use condition and urban construction land proportion in this urbanized area.
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