Urban land cover classification is the starting point of urban studies.However, in China, there has been a long-term debate on how to interpret China urban land cover classification.This paper, from an approach of defining urban area in a narrow sense, looks at the structure of urban area, esp.the classification between urban area and the outer area-rural area, the internal elements of it such as town centers, border district and suburbs.It argues that the following elements can be used as indicators to classify town centers, border district and suburbs, the population density in different districts;the proportionate of people in secondary industry and tertiary industry;Day-Night Population and the location index of the three industries.
