Past land use decisions and socioeconomic factors influence urban greenbelt development: a case study of Shanghai, China
Although the designation of greenbelts around cities has been a common practice for several decades, some greenbelts have not been successfully protected from development. To explore the forces driving the construction of greenbelts, this paper examines how past land use and land cover decisions and current socioeconomic factors have affected the development of the artificial greenbelt zone in China’s Shanghai metropolitan area. Using aerial photographs from 1994, 2005, and 2010, we find that the area of afforested greenbelt was generally related to past land use/cover decisions.