Coordinated evaluation and development model of oasis urbanization from the perspective of new urbanization: A case study in Shandan County of Hexi Corridor, China

“New urbanization”, as a new proposition, has become an important strategy and direction in the progress of China's urbanization. Consequently, exploring the development pattern can be valuable for our academic study and practical work. This paper chose population urbanization and land urbanization as the research subjects, aiming to find the coordination between them and propose a development model. The results are as follows. (1) From 2000-2014, the composite indexes of population and land urbanization in Shandan County have shown an upward trend. The composite index of population urbanization has been higher than that of land urbanization from 2000 to 2012, but lower from 2013 to 2014. (2) The process of population and land urbanization has promoted the rapid development of Shandan County. The coordination between population and land urbanization has gone through four stages: disordered, transitional, moderately coordinated and highly coordinated stages. The final change from moderate incoordination to high coordination is a good transition but of low level. Therefore, there is a large room for transition of development. (3) We have proposed urban optimization by considering reasonable population transfer, intensive land utilization, reform of mechanism, and new type urban construction. The urbanization development models suitable for arid oasis areas in China have also been established, including comprehensive model of eco-industry, guiding model of cultural tourism, city-industry integration model, development model of new rural communities, and construction model of innovative cities. These results might provide useful references for the development of oasis cities in China.