IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/lauspo/v153y2025ics0264837725000766.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Spatio-temporal evolution of vertical urban growth in China’s Yangtze River Delta from 1990 to 2020

Author

Listed:
  • Yin, Chenglong
  • Chen, Ruishan
  • Xiao, Xiangming
  • Qin, Yuanwei
  • Meng, Fei
  • Yao, Yuan
  • Pan, Li
  • Zheng, Lilin

Abstract

Building height changes are an important feature of urbanization. Accurately capturing the spatio-temporal dynamics of building height changes is crucial for characterizing urban expansion patterns. Previous studies of urbanization have mainly focused on horizontal expansion and lacked attention to vertical growth. This study investigated vertical growth in a rapidly urbanizing region, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region of China, from 1990 to 2020 to reveal the changing spatio-temporal distribution of building height. We also analyzed how major socio-economic factors and policies influence the increase in the number of new high-rise buildings. The results show that the fastest vertical expansion occurred in Shanghai, southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang, and eastern Anhui, revealing an uneven pattern of urban vertical growth across the YRD region and potentially leading to the urban ecological, environmental, and public health concerns in these areas. The number of newly added pixels rose from 1991 to 2015 and reached its maximum from 2011 to 2015 (11,084,153, corresponding to 9975.74 km²). However, it started to fall back from 2016 to 2020 (5,488,574, 4939.72 km²). Most added building heights were 9–24 m, corresponding to 3–8 floors. The YRD had the maximum number of new high-rise building pixels from 2011 to 2015 (475,284, 427.76 km²). The number of new high-rise buildings positively correlates with GDP, population, and the percentage of tertiary industry while negatively correlated with the percentage of secondary industry. In alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11’s targets on affordable housing and sustainable urbanization, our analysis of vertical expansion can provide an important perspective for understanding the mechanism of urban vertical growth in urbanization and guide policy interventions to balance economic growth with ecological preservation for rapidly urbanizing regions worldwide.

Suggested Citation

  • Yin, Chenglong & Chen, Ruishan & Xiao, Xiangming & Qin, Yuanwei & Meng, Fei & Yao, Yuan & Pan, Li & Zheng, Lilin, 2025. "Spatio-temporal evolution of vertical urban growth in China’s Yangtze River Delta from 1990 to 2020," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:153:y:2025:i:c:s0264837725000766
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2025.107542
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837725000766
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.landusepol.2025.107542?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:153:y:2025:i:c:s0264837725000766. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joice Jiang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/land-use-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.