A Study on the Correlation of Urban Morphology with Urban Comprehensive Strength

This paper studies the correlation between the urban morphology and urban comprehensive strength. We select 31 cities with a population over one million in 1990 as our samples. Specifically, we introduce a powerful new clustering methodology, affinity propagation clustering, published in “science” in 2007, to cluster urban shape indicators. Then, using principal component analysis, we evaluate the 31 cities’ comprehensive strength in 1990 and 2000, calculate the comprehensive scores and rank the cities for three-level hierarchy. Finally, we test the agreement of urban shape clusters and urban comprehensive strength hierarchies by means of Rand Index. Results suggest that the cities which have increased comprehensive ranking in 2000 are planned more regularly and compactly.