Monitoring and analysis of China’s integrated city development based on remote sensing: a case study of Guangfo city

: Regional synergy is seen as an advanced form of coordinating the social economy and maintaining competitiveness in today's global competition system. Since China's reform and development, under the background of rapid urbanization and regional coordinated development, cities with geographical proximity and close economic and social ties have gradually formed a new mode of urban development, which is called integrated city. As a new phenomenon in the process of China’s urbanization, the existing research mainly focuses on the typical case studies, and the research methods are mostly limited to literature review and theoretical analysis. Therefore, in this paper, the Guangfo City which is the most representative integrated citiy in China was selected as the research objectives. Based on multi-spectral Landsat 8 and nighttime light NPP/VIIRS images, landuse conversion, block light fluctuation and light gravity center migration in the transitional zone of the integrated cities were analyzed respectively. The results show that there is significant spatial heterogeneity in the integration level of Guangfo City’s development. Moreover, the coupling analysis of nighttime light and urban expansion in the boundary zone shows that the enhancement effect of construction land expansion on nighttime light is expanding with the development of integration, and the inhibition effect of vegetation cover on nighttime light intensity is weakening. Our application results expand the data sources of integrated city research and the obtained results can potentially support the decision-making and planning in the process of urban development.