Abstract: Urban expansion in which non-urban land use converted to urban land use is an important aspect of urbanization. With the progress of urbanization, Fuzhou City, located in the center of the Fuzhou Basin, Southeast China, has witnessed a rapid urban expansion process. To reveal the dynamics of urban expansion, remote sensing technique was employed. The use of the index-based built-up index (IBI) and a supervised classification has extracted urban built-up land information of the city from multi-temporal Landsat MSS/TM images of 1976, 1986, 1996 and 2006. The results show that during the 30-year study period the urban built-up area of Fuzhou has increased from 33 km² in 1976 to 138 km² in 2006, a net increase of 105 km². Due to the formation of the new urban areas such as Jinshan in the west and Kuai’an in the southeast, and the fast growth of Mawei, the previously-dispersed urban areas of Fuzhou are almost connected with each other from west to east. The study also reveals that massive urban expansion took place mainly in the late 20 years after 1986. The urban growth has been slow in the first 10 years and fast in the late 20 years. The urban expanded to the north first, then to the east, and finally to the west, and was sprawled in a planar way rather than a linear way. Driving force analysis indicates that fast economic development, population increase, government decisions and terrain conditions are all factors contributing to the urban expansion of Fuzhou. Unlike many other rapid growing cities in the country, Fuzhou’s urban expansion was mainly driven by the tertiary industry rather than the secondary industry based on the increase rate. The rapid urban growth of Fuzhou City has brought about environment and resources repercussions to the city. Among them, the most serious problem is the urban heat island phenomenon. The considerable increase in built-up land areas in the Fuzhou Basin has significantly altered the landscapes of the basin and the thermal environment of the city. As a result, the whole basin in 2006 was almost in a heat island state. This has caused a severe urban heat island effect for the city and therefore attention should be paid by the government decision makers.