Modeling the Collaborative Evolution of Urban Land Considering Urban Interactions under Intermediate Intervention, in the Urban Agglomeration in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River in China

As the dominant area in regional competitions, the urban agglomeration has experienced a dramatic urban land evolution, which has had a significant impact on regional socio-economic development and ecological environment. Conventional simulation models mainly explore the dynamic change of urban land based on the situation of a single city. The urban interactions, which linked separate cities into an organic urban agglomeration area, have not been sufficiently concerned, especially the urban interaction in the context of intermediate intervention. In this paper, we employ the radiation model to measure the urban interaction under intermediate intervention, and further spatially explicitly express the spatial network and influence of such an interaction. A simulation model coupling improved urban interaction is proposed to model the collaborative evolution of urban land in urban agglomeration by considering the influence of improved urban interactions into the basic framework of the cellular automata model. Taking the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in China as a case study, the validity and suitability of the model are evaluated. The results show that, the proposed simulation model exhibits better performance in capturing the networked evolution of urban land. Considering urban interactions under intermediate intervention is necessary for modeling the collaborative evolution of urban land in urban agglomeration areas. The distribution of the urban interaction’s influence can be a beneficial reference for guiding the optimal allocation of urban land in a networked way.