An Integrated Approach to Explore the Relationship Among Economic, Construction Land Use, and Ecology Subsystems in Zhejiang Province, China

Chuyu Xia,Zhou Shi,Yanmei Ye,Yan Li

doi:10.3390/su8050498

Abstract

Zhejiang Province, China is experiencing rapid urbanization, facing the challenge of coupling socioeconomic development and ecological conservation. This paper establishes a comprehensive index system to assess coordinating development of economic, construction land use (CLU), and ecology subsystems. A Granger test and a coupling coordination model were applied to explore the causal relationship and the coordinated development state among the three subsystems from 2000 to 2012. The results showed that: (1) changes in the integrated value of the economic subsystem were the Granger cause of changes in the ecology and CLU subsystems, and the changes in the integrated values of ecology and CLU was each other’s Granger cause; (2) the coupling coordination relationship of the integrated value for economic–CLU–ecology was constrained by the relationship between the economic and the CLU subsystems from 2000 to 2004, and that between the ecology and the economic subsystems was the impediment of the sustainable development of economic–CLU–ecology from 2004 to 2012. This research helps to identify approach to sustainable development through analyzing synergistic effects, interdependencies, and trade-offs among the integrated economic–CLU–ecology values, and to make significant contribution to urban planning policies in rapid urbanization region.

Highlights

China has experienced fast-paced economic growth and a period of rapid urbanization following the country’s reform and opening up in the late 1970s [1]
Based on the Granger test, we find economic subsystem is the key for the sustainable development of modernization development and ecological protection because the change of integrated economic subsystem was the Granger cause of that of ecology and construction land use (CLU) values
We showed that the change of integrated economic subsystem was the Granger cause of changes to the integrated ecology and CLU values

Summary

Introduction

China has experienced fast-paced economic growth and a period of rapid urbanization following the country’s reform and opening up in the late 1970s [1]. Kuznets defines economic development as the movement of a population from rural to urban areas. This movement requires an increase in city sizes, the expansion of the industrial and the service sectors [2], the creation of new infrastructure [3], and the building of more residential housing. All of these changes mean an increasing need for land that is defined for construction use. The increase in the construction land has caused a sharp decrease in the amount of cultivated land, and threatened land productivity from ecological impact and the impact of cultivated land change induced by landscape

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion