Divergent patterns of settlement expansion and population growth in China

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasize integrated, sustainable planning for human settlements. Previous studies on settlement change focused on static physical structures while overlooking distinctions between settlement types and their relationships with population. Using a dataset of eight settlement types from 1990 to 2020, we compared them with population datasets over the same period. Our findings indicate that settlement expansion does not proportionately correspond with population growth. New settlements predominantly emerged in Dense Villages and Sub-urban Landscapes, while population increases mainly occurred in Large Cities and Urban Landscapes. Decoupling analysis revealed land expansion often outpaced population growth across most settlement types. Population density declined across most settlement types, with the most pronounced decreases observed in Large Cities in eastern China. Our study provides a national-scale assessment of how various settlement types interact with population dynamics, offering new insights into the decoupling of land urbanization and population urbanization.