Spatial heterogeneity study of urban expansion and its influencing factors based on multiscale geographically weighted regression – the case of central plains urban agglomeration

The MGWR model is applied to explore primary drivers of construction land expansion in various land use functional areas. The results show that: (1) owing to differences in economic foundations, functional positioning and development models among various land functional zones within the urban agglomeration, significant spatial heterogeneity exists in land expansion patterns across regions. (2) MGWR models demonstrated superior fitting performance compared to OLS and GWR models. Population and the share of secondary and tertiary industries are global variables with significant impacts on agglomeration expansion. The remaining local variables, with the maximum bandwidth being 1913 (population) and the minimum bandwidth being 94 (road distance). Elevation and distance from roads are the most significant factors influencing urban expansion. (3) The main agricultural production zones are significantly affected by GDP. The ecological functional zone and outer urban zone are particularly influenced by slope considerations. The belly of urban zone is driven mainly by population. The expansion in the core economic zones is significantly negative related to the second- and third-industry.