Analysis of spatio-temporal characteristics and drivers of urban expansion in major states of Malaysia over the past 30 years

Malaysia borders the South China Sea to the east and the Strait of Malacca to the west, serving as an important hub connecting Asia and Oceania. In recent years, Malaysian cities have developed rapidly, and understanding their urban expansion characteristics is helpful for high-quality urban planning and development. Based on Landsat series remote sensing image data in 1990, 2017 and 2023, combined with night light data to extract urban land, this paper classified urban land expansion based on the urban expansion intensity differentiation index, and iterated the inverse S function of urban land density with Levenberg-Marquardt optimization algorithm to obtain the fitted urban land density curve. Based on the Python-based the landscape expansion index, the spatial and temporal characteristics and influencing factors of urban expansion in four states were analyzed. The results show that Selangor and Kelantan on both sides of Malaysia are medium-expansion cities, while Malacca and Terengganu are slow-expansion cities, with rapid expansion from 1990 to 2023 and slow expansion from 2017 to 2023. The cities in Selangor and Malacca on the west coast of Malaysia are mainly infilling and edge expansion, and the form is more compact. The cities of Terengganu and Kelantan on the east coast have more outlying expansion and scattered distribution. Urban expansion is mostly affected by population, geography, economy and other factors. Cities on the west coast need to pay attention to coordinated development, while cities on the east coast lag behind in economic development and need to improve the level of urban development. This study helps to increase the understanding of urban expansion in Asia, deepen the understanding of the different characteristics of urban expansion, and achieve sustainable urban development.