| Summary: | The co-evolution of multi-cities has emerged as the primary form of urbanization in China in recent years. However, the processes, patterns, and coordination are not well characterized and understood, which hinders the understanding of the driving forces, consequences, and management of polycentric urban development. We used the Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) algorithm to integrate all available Landsat 5, 7, and 8 images and map annual land use and land cover (LULC) from 2001 to 2017 in the Chang–Zhu–Tan urban agglomeration (CZTUA), a typical urban agglomeration in China. Results showed that the impervious surface in the study area expanded by 371 km<sup>2</sup> with an annual growth rate of 2.25%, primarily at the cost of cropland (169 km<sup>2</sup>) and forest (206 km<sup>2</sup>) during the study period. Urban growth has evolved from infilling being the dominant type in the earlier period to mainly edge-expansion and leapfrogging in the core cities, and from no dominant type to mainly leapfrogging in the satellite cities. The unfolding of the “cool center and hot edge” urban growth pattern in CZTUA, characterized by higher expansion rates in the peripheral than in the core cities, may signify a new form of the co-evolution of multi-cities in the process of urbanization. Detailed urban management and planning policies in CZTUA were analyzed. The co-evolution of multi-cities principles need to be studied in more extensive regions, which could help policymakers to promote sustainable and livable development in the future.
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