Association Study on Urban Form and Urban Resources Efficiency Based on GIS and DEA: A Case Study of Shanghai

Rapid urbanisation has resulted in the change of urban forms as well as increased consumption of various urban resources. This paper reports an empirical study of China’s Shanghai municipality to investigate the relationship between urban form and the efficiency usage of urban resources. Based on a series of Landsat imagery over the period from 1982 to 2008, the changing characteristics of the urban spatial forms in Shanghai were measured in GIS. Urban resources efficiency was measured through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. By correlating the urban form and resource efficiency indicators through a regression analysis, the results show that the changes of urban resource efficiency are closely related to changes of urban forms. In general, the instability and complexity of the external form of the city reduces the urban resources efficiency. Moreover, high population density conduces to lower urban resources efficiency. In addition, the road network density and the spatial accessibility through the road network impact significantly the improvement of urban resources efficiency; besides, the compactness of urban external form does not have much influence on urban resources efficiency according to this study.