Abstract
Rural settlement land consolidation potential calculation is the basic work of land consolidation. An accurate potential is essential to rural development planners and policy makers as a project target or prediction. The traditional calculation methods include the per capita/household construction land method, idle rural residential land method, and comprehensive evaluation method. Though there have been some improvements, the potential for calculation methods on a national level is still limited. This article illustrates a new method for calculating the consolidation potential of rural settlement land, based on field data and the restructuring restrictions applicable to each rural land parcel in China. The field data was from Shandong Province because it lies within the country’s biggest grain-producing area with the largest distribution density of rural settlements. It is an excellent representative sample for rural settlement land consolidation, offering a microcosm of rural development in China. For the study’s comprehensive evaluation system, due to the lack of nationwide field survey data, the potential of Shandong Province was chosen as the standard value. We selected indicators concerning land resources, depopulation, transportation accessibility, local economic development, urbanization, and natural conditions to build an evaluation system. We then calculated the potential of each province according to their coefficients and field data from Shandong Province. Every province except Taiwan (for which no data were available) was divided into five zones for rural settlement land consolidation: the most-suitable zone, suitable zone, general zone, restricted zone, and most-restricted zone. The total rate of land consolidation is estimated at 0.24 for 2010 and forecast at 0.33 for 2020, while those years’ respective consolidation potentials are 32,777.92 km2 and 44,707.81 km2. The rate is the total rural settlement land before land consolidation divided by added cultivated land after consolidation. The higher the rate, more effective the land consolidation is.
Highlights
China is pursuing rapid urbanization—leading to tremendous economic growth, social improvement, and environmental changes—and encouraging more farmers to move to urban areas and cities
Based on the correlations among the economic development indicators, the disposable income of urban residents per capita (UI/capita), the ratio of incomes of urban and rural residents (UI/RI), per capita rural electricity consumption (RE/capita), and year-end home value (HV) were removed due to their close relationship with net income of rural residents per capita (RI/capita), which had a stronger connection with Rural settlement land consolidation (RSLC) than the former three indicators
Based on the correlations among the social improvement indicators, the area proportion of rural settlements influenced by roads (PARR) and the area proportion of rural settlements at the urban fringe (PARU) were omitted due to their close relationships with the number proportion of rural settlements influenced by roads (PNRR) and the number proportion of rural settlements at the urban fringe (PNRU) separately
Summary
China is pursuing rapid urbanization—leading to tremendous economic growth, social improvement, and environmental changes—and encouraging more farmers to move to urban areas and cities. Rapid urbanization is causing changes in rural land use, rural-to-urban population migration, and increasing exploitation and utilization of natural resources [2]. Unprecedentedly massive rural-to-urban migration is a significant result of China’s economic reform and rapid urbanization over the past three decades [3]. Economic development and urbanization are the major causes of rural population decline [4], confronting China with the dilemma of an increasing urban population and decreasing rural population. According to data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s rural population in 2000 was 808.37 million, which accounted for 63.78% of the total population. The decline continued from 2010 to 2015, by which point the rural population was 603.46 million, accounting for only 43.90% of China’s total population
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