Building density is an important issue in urban planning and land management.
In the article, building coverage ratio (BCR) and floor area ratio (FAR) values extracted
from high resolution satellite images were used to indicate buildings’ stretching on the
surface and growth along the third dimension within areas of interest in Shanghai City,
P.R. China. The results show that the variation of FAR is higher than that of BCR in the
inner circle, and that the newer commercial centers have higher FAR and lower BCR
values, while the traditional commercial areas have higher FAR and BCR ratios. By
comparing different residential areas, it was found that the historical “Shikumen” areas and
the old residential areas built before 1980s have higher BCR and lower FAR, while the
new residential areas have higher FAR and lower BCR, except for the villa areas. These
results suggest that both older building areas and villa areas use land resources in an
inefficient way, and therefore better planning and management of urban land are needed
for those fast economic growing regions.