City crisis is surely challenging city leaders and providing chanees for rebuilding city leaders authority.

Under the serious impact of the turning of social structures and global financial crisis, leaders in urban area are confronted with the challenges, such as the turning of the guidance of value, the bind of resources in development, the turning of leading style, the renewal of knowledge and specialized ability, the prevention of "city illness", as well as the strong pressure of public opinion.

Based on data from Urban Statistical Yearbook of China,choose urban built-up area of cities at prefecture level or above in middle China as a case,and use annual growth rate and expansion index of urban built-up area to analyze temporal-spatial evolution of urban built-up area in middle China during 1985—2004.