A novel approach to assess the urban land-use efficiency of 767 resource-based cities in China

Abstract

China is accelerating the transformation and development of resource-based cities. Urban land-use efficiency is crucial for assessing land output capacity and regional development quality. Measuring the land-use efficiency of resource-based cities and determining its main factors help improve land-use efficiency and promote the transformation of resource-based cities. However, previous urban land-use efficiency studies of multi-source data and its driving factors have been insufficient. Therefore, according to this study's inherent characteristics of urban land use efficiency, a feasible analysis framework is built using multi-source remote sensing data. Three indicators are proposed: urban construction land intensity, urban nighttime light intensity, and urban point of interest (POI) density. We developed the urban land-use efficiency index (ULEI) to explore the spatial pattern of urban land-use efficiency in resource-based cities. We applied the ternary phase diagram to identify critical factors in the three criteria. The results show that land-use efficiency is generally low in resource-based cities at the county scale. According to the ULEI, the top and bottom resource-based cities have significant agglomeration. The southwest region has higher land-use efficiency, while the northern region has the opposite. Meanwhile, there are significant differences in the urban land-use efficiency of resource-based cities in different growth stages. Growing cities have the highest land-use efficiency, while recessionary cities have the opposite. In addition, resource-based cities with higher land-use efficiency tend to be more balanced among the three criteria. Our results show the approach's effectiveness, which provides objective and precise spatial information for urban land use at the county scale for resource-based cities, leading to more informed decision-making.