Study of land-use and land cover change is crucial not only for global change but also for sustainable development in local scale. This paper takes up Shenzhen city in China for a case study to analyze the relationship between rapid economic growth and urbanization which are causing significant changes in the land-use; the city has experienced very rapid economic development and environmental changes which were second to none in its speed since the late 1980s. The land-use changes have been

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... cted based on the post-classification comparison technique in combination with the maximum likelihood classifier and probabilistic-relaxation method, using the LANDSAT MSS and TM data for the years of 1980, 1988 and 1994. The main characteristic of the land-use change in the period of 1980 to 1994 is the quick expansion of urban areas and decrease in farm land. This can be thought as the result of interaction between the driving forces such as the population growth, the foreign investment, and the industrial siting as well as the counter forces such as the traffic condition, natural condition, and land-use structure which have been subject to the special development policies applied to the area.