THE EFFECT OF URBANIZATION ON AGRICULTURAL LAND USE CHANGES IN TAIPEI-KEELUNG METROPOLITAN AREA

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of urbanization on agricultural land use changes in Taipei-Keelung Metropolitan area during 1991-2007. Urbanization is often viewed as a movement trend of people from rural to urban areas with population growth. Rapid changes in population growth and urbanization development are resulting in land-use shifts that are posing a serious threat to its sustainability. To understand the dynamics of land-use changes and their future evolution, and quantify their impacts are central to the debate on sustainability. This study, based on the relationship between demographic changes and agricultural land-use changes, collects GIS data of land uses, population, aging index, population density and so forth, and then using spatial statistics analysis by Geoda to explore agricultural land use changes and spatial dependence in Taipei-Keelung metropolitan area during the period of 1991-2007. Results have shown that the distributions of population and agricultural land use changes exhibit a spatial concentration and expansion over time. The estimating results of the spatial error model are better than the results of OLS. Furthermore, the results also provide land use planners useful suggestions.