Spatiotemporal Evolution of Land-Use Landscape Patterns Under Park City Construction: A GIS-Based Case Study of Shenyang’s Main Urban Area (2000–2020)

Motivated by China’s new urbanization and ecological civilization construction initiatives, the Shenyang Municipal Committee has recently has proposed an ambitious goal of advancing the construction of a Park City with northern characteristics. The scientifically planned urban landscape is essential for balancing ecological protection with sustainable development,. This plan is crucial for driving the realization of the Park City initiative. This study employed ArcGIS 10.8 and Fragstats 4.2 to systematically examine land use transitions and landscape pattern dynamics in Shenyang’s main urban area (2000–2020). The results indicated that Shenyang’s urban core has experienced significant southward expansion across the Hun River over the last two decades. This expansion resulted in a substantial increase in constructed land of 490.84 km2 (from 15.78% to 29.19% in total coverage). Conversely, cultivated land, forest land, and grassland exhibited negative dynamic rates of −0.99%, −0.54%, and −1.02%, respectively, with 76.89% of cultivated land converted to construction land. Landscape pattern indices revealed intensified fragmentation: the number of patches rose by 163, while the largest patch area, landscape aggregation index, and contagion index decreased by 16.74%, 0.40%, and 5.84%, respectively. However, the landscape division index increased by 0.12%, with Shannon’s diversity index and evenness index increasing by 0.19 and 0.11, respectively. These metrics demonstrated the positive correlation between urbanization intensity and landscape pattern alterations. The examination of the dynamic land use patterns in Shenyang integrated seven crucial indicators to assess the development of the emerging Park City. Results indicated challenges including urban land expansion, cultivated land loss, limited resources, and uneven green space distribution. The findings revealed the negative correlation between land use pattern evolution and Park City requirements. The research suggested strategies at the macro-, meso-, and micro-scales to address these issues and reconcile urbanization pressures with sustainable Park City development in Shenyang.