This study summarizes the dynamics of urban expansion and urbanization in the recent 20 years in Khovd town, Khovd province of Mongolia. The study used fractal geometry to describe urban land use in Khovd using a geographic information system (GIS), and applied the relation of area and perimeter index to measure urban expansion and demonstrate the potential for improving urban planning studies. The urban planning process takes into account the shape of the city, the area perimeter ratio, each

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... nd use spatial distribution, and the geometry of urban extent. The shape, land patches distribution, and expansions of the urban area were analyzed based on the created feature layers of the GIS. The GIS feature layers were developed based on the data sets from cloud-free Landsat 5,7,8 images acquired for the nearest same month time frame 2000, 2010, and 2020. The expansion of Khovd town showed relatively stable development and formed a correct shape extent and the areal expansion of urban area was 3238 ha or average annual growth of 162.4 ha/year in 20 years, while perimeter growth was 43325 m (2166 m/year), representing quite compact and relatively stable expansion. Overall, the research indicated that the GIS and remotely sensing methods were more effective to analyse the urban expansion (especially fractal geometry) as well as the urban spatial metric study.