Simulating the dynamics of urban land quantity in China from 2020 to 2070 under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

Rapid expansion of urban land areas in the past few decades has exerted great pressure on regional environment, and simulating urban land dynamics is of great significance for sustainable urban development. However, the differences in driving forces of urban land among cities were not fully considered in previous simulations. Here, we adopted a data-driven approach combined with Monte Carlo method to simulate future urban land quantity in China at the city scale under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). The results show that the total urban land area of China will reach 154,105 to 289,932 km2 by 2070 under different scenarios, 1.8 to 3.4 times that of 2020. Compared with the traditional methods at the national or regional scale, the clustering method used to classify urban land expansion types can better fit the urban land change of each city. Meanwhile, the iterative simuation of future urban land quantity can depict the slowing down trend of urban land expansion. This study provides the amount of urban land from 2020 to 2070 at the city scale, confirming a close relationship between urban development and selection of urbanization pathway. Choosing a more sustainable path of social and economic development is conducive to restraining the rapid expansion of urban land in China. It is particularly important to formulate city-specific sustainable development strategies according to the trend of urban land dynamics over time. •We simulate urban land dynamics for 280 Chinese cities under the SSPs.•The data driven approach combined with Monte Carlo performed better than regional static models.•can evolve from a rapidly urbanizing one to a steadily urbanizing or an urbanized one over time.•We can simulate the slow down of urban land expansion after 2050s under SSP1.