Abstract：At present, with the acceleration of urbanization in our country, the research on the phenomena of urbanization has caught much more attention, even become a central topic for discussion. Yet the direct spatial materialization of urbanization is urban spatial expansion. It will enhance the understanding for the essence of urbanization, and provide sufficient information for the policy-making about urban spatial sustainable development. The article chooses urban spatial expansion of Nanjing as its case study. On the base of deep cognition and anatomy on natural landscape, regional economy and urban land use structural feature etc, the spatial dynamic procedure of urban expansion in Nanjing and its influential factor are exposed. Based on the analysis on the feature of economic development and demography in Nanjing, the paper concludes:Nanjing is in the phase of urbanization acceleration, and urban spatial concentration development appears more and more obvious, meanwhile there exists analogously ring-type and spatial sprawl expansion for urban land use. With the fast development of urban space, there also appear serious internal structural issues for future development. Moreover, from the view of analysis on urban spatial network, with the further grow th of urban space, the pattern of spatial structure in Nanjing gradually evolves from the type of geometric shape to that of freeness, which embodies the transition of organic combination from structural close to structural openness.Finally, based on the conceptual apprehension on urban general planning, the article generalizes the basic management strategy for urban spatial grow th control:namely, 1)General control from outer designated ring-confine the main cities' building area; 2)zoning management for internal space in the main cities' building area -structural optimizing; 3)spatial organizing in metropolis development zone at regional level-spatial guide from outer area. In a word, the paper focuses on the urban spatial expansion under the background of urbanization as well as management patterns for urban spatial growth. From the experience of Najing city case study, it will provide scientific and effective base for metropolis sustainable development.
