This book aims to present implications for China's urban development through international comparison of urbanization process from the perspective of spatio-temporal pattern, driving factors, rural-urban interactions, development trends and economic-ecological-social synergic development. Followed the research hotspot of the international urban studies, this book identifies challenges and opportunities in the process of urban development through analyzing and comparing urbanization pathways of several Asian countries as for representatives. It provides both decision support for China's urban development and management, and scientific support for the sustainable urban development in Asian countries.

Dr. Qian Zhang has over 10 years research expertise on urban remote sensing and spatial analysis, spatial-explicit urban modeling, sustainable urban development and regional environmental change, especially for China. She has involved over 10 international and domestic research projects for NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), the Swedish Research Council (VR), the Swedish International Development Coopeartion Agency (SIDA), the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). She is a recipient of Royal Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, KTH) -China Scholarship Council (CSC) Fellowship (2007-2010). She is an International Social Science Council (ISSC) Sustainable Urbanization II Fellow in 2014. Professor Xiangzheng Deng is a senior research fellow from the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research areas include Land-Use/Land Cover Change, Hydrology, Ecosystem Service, Urbanization and Global Environmental Change and Regional Sustainable Development. He has published more than one hundred pieces of papers. As a leading scientist, he is presiding over quite a lot of projects including the grants from Natural Science Foundation of United States, Natural Sciences Foundation of China, Ministry of Science and Technology of China, etc. He develops a couple of models, e.g., Dynamics of Land System (DLS) model, Computable General Equilibrium of Land Use Change (CGELUC) model and Dynamic Agricultural Production (DynaAP) model, which are capable of simulating the dynamics and consequences of land system changes and which are widely used in land planning and environment planning.