近年来，我国的城市发展迅速，城市化水平不断提高，城市的迅速发展也带来了一系列的问题，其中最主要的一个问题便是城市的不断扩张与有限的土地资源之间的矛盾。城市建成区扩展的实质是人类为满足社会经济的发展需要，不断地调整、配置城市边缘区各类土地利用的过程。积极探讨城市用地扩展理论和评价方法能够为政府制定集约利用政策，建立科学、合理的用地管理与决策体系提供理论依据及技术支持，具有重要的现实意义。城市规模包括城市人口规模和城市用地规模。城市用地规模是随着城市人口规模而变化的。1990 年代以来，城市人均用地已有较大幅度增加，国内一些学者经常用城市用地增长弹性系数（城市用地增长率／城市人口增长率）来分析用地的变化趋势，作为评判城市用地扩展状况的依据之一。据中国城市规划设计院对中国历年城市化过程的分析，此系数为1.12 较合适。但每个城市都有自己的历史、地理位置、人口和经济发展水平等实际情况，而且城市发展过程中影响城市规模变化的主导因素也会有变化，因此在这个统一的标准下应该有适合于不同城市特点的弹性系数。本文选取全国近650多个城市从1998至2007年十年的人口和建设用地统计数据，计算出它们的用地增长弹性系数并按不同标准分类，分析弹性系数的变化规律，推导出其在不同标准下的合理值。

In recent years, China's rapid urban development, constantly improve the level of urbanization, the rapid development of cities has also brought a series of problems, one of the most important issue is the continuing expansion of the city with limited land resources to resolve their conflicts. The essence of urban expansion to meet the socio-economic human development needs, and constantly adjust, configure various types of urban fringe land-use process. Actively exploring the expansion of urban land use theory and evaluation methods for the intensive use of the Government to formulate policies and establish a scientific and rational system of land management and decision-making and provide a theoretical basis and technical support, has an important practical significance. As the scale of urban land use is changing with the size of the urban population. Since the 1990s, urban land per capita has increased more significantly, some scholars often use elasticity of urban land use growth (growth rate of urban land use / urban population growth rate) to analyze changes in land use trends, the expansion of urban land use as a judgment based on the state of one. According to the Town Planning and Design Institute of China's urbanization process over the years of analysis, this factor of 1.12 is appropriate. However, each city has its own history, geography, population and economic development level of the actual situation, the process of urban development and the impact of changes in the size of the cities will be the dominant factor of change, Therefore, under this standard should be suited to the characteristics of different cities elasticity. In this paper, the author use the population and land use data about more than 650 cities from 1998 to 2007 to calculate the growth of their elasticity and will land them a list of different criterias for classification, analyze the changes in the law of elasticity, and deduce a reasonable value under different standards.