Urban Land Use Transitions and the Economic Spatial Spillovers of Central Cities in China’s Urban Agglomerations

Abstract

Urbanization and land use transformation are typical characteristics of China in recent decades. Studying the effects of urban land use transitions (ULUT) on the economic spatial spillovers of central cities (ESSCC) can provide a reference for China to optimize cities’ land space layout and promote their coordinated development. Based on the direct and indirect effects of ULUT in central cities on the production factors and economic growth in other cities, this paper reveals the mechanisms underlying the influence of ULUT on ESSCC. Then, we usethe expanded geographical distance-weighted spatial Durbin model with the panel data of 152 Chinese urban agglomeration cities from 2003 to 2016 to empirically test it. The results show that, since 2003, the rate of urban land expansions, the level of urban land intensive use (ULIU), the degree of land marketization, and the urban land prices in China have increased substantially; and the proportionate supplies of industrial land, commercial land, and residential land have decreased. Moreover, ULUT between cities have significant spatial autocorrelations. The current ULUT have positive but small effects on ESSCC. Among them, ULIU has the greatest promotion effects on ESSCC. The impacts of ULUT on ESSCC vary greatly among urban agglomerations. The ULUT in central cities indirectly enhance the ESSCC, which mainly depend on the positive effects of ULUT on enterprise investment, infrastructure investment, labor and technological efficiency and the spatial spread effects of these production factors. This is the main intermediate mechanism by which the ULUT in central cities enhance the ESSCC. Continuing to strengthen ULIU, promote the improvement of land marketization, and establish and improve the coordination mechanism for the economic development of urban agglomerations will help to strengthen the ESSCC in urban agglomerations. The results provide evidence for how the Chinese government can enhance the ESSCC and promote the coordinated development of cities through ULUT under new urbanization.

Evaluation of Urban Commercial Land Use Intensification Based on Land Parcels: Taking Wuxi City as an Example

“…Based on the basic characteristics of agricultural land, the law of diminishing returns of land shows that the input and output of land do not always have a positive relationship, and, for parcels in different spatial locations in cities, the degree of intensive use does not increase with the increase in the input of productive resources [43]. For a parcel of land, there are many factors that characterize intensive use, such as the comprehensive floor area ratio, the building density, the occupancy rate of commercial properties, the degree of functional compatibility between the use of the land and surrounding parcels, and the diversity of commercial uses.…”

“…The issue of the intensification of land use in cities is a central topic in urban research and management [43][44][45]. In recent years, commercial land use has gradually become the focus in evaluating land-intensive uses in cities [21].…”

Analysis of the Impact of Industrial Land Price Distortion on Overcapacity in the Textile Industry and Its Sustainability in China

“…As this "bottom-to-bottom" competition becomes increasingly fierce, the sale of industrial land gradually evolves from the appropriately low price typically found at the beginning, to the "loss" sale price [10,11]. This directly leads to the distortion of China's industrial land prices and has a far-reaching impact on the sustainable land use [12,13]. Low land prices reduce enterprises' cost of entry to a large extent; low prices therefore become an effective behavior engaged in by local governments to attract enterprises [14,15].…”

Improving Farmer Willingness to Participate in the Transfer of Land Rights in Rural China: A Preference-Based Income Distribution Scheme

“…This phenomenon is especially common in developing countries [7][8][9]. An important direction for optimizing the rural human-land relationship and regional system functions is to revitalize rural land elements, activate "sleeping" assets, improve rural land use efficiency while ensuring rural revitalization industry land needs, and take land as the core to drive the integration and reconstruction of rural population, capital and technical elements [10][11][12][13]. In the context of the strictest cultivated land protection and the Land 2022, 11, 379. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11030379 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land prudent promotion of the reformation of the homestead system, the innovative use of rural collective construction land is particularly critical.…”