Gu Chaolin, Chen Tian, Ding Jinhong, Yu Wei
The authors made a survey of the current situation of Chinese megalopolises.such as Beijing,Shanghai,Guangzhou,and Nanjing,and found that changes of the urban fringes in these cities are more and more important because the urban economic made a great progress since the reforming and opening of China .This paper focused on the study of the urban fringe's specific properties in the Chinese megalopolises. Firstly,this paper discusssed the division of the urban fringe on the base of the survey of Guangahou city. The urban fringe consists of two parts,i e,the inner fringe and the outer fringe. The urban-rural continuum is only one part of the inner fringe. Secondly, this paper expounded in details the characteristics of the urban fringe in Chinese Megalopolises,in- eluding:(1)the density of population and the population structure; (2) the community structure, sociometry and social problems;(3)the economic structure and patterns of the diversified econo- my and(4)the impact of urban expansion on agricultural Land. Finally .this paper discussed also the evolution laws of the spatial expansion in the urban fringe,such as the Beijing model,the Shanghai model,the Wuxi model and the Guangzhou model.