Assessment Framework and Decision—Support System for Consolidating Urban-Rural Construction Land in Coastal China

Fangfang Cai,Ming Zhu,Lijie Pu

doi:10.3390/su6117689

Abstract

Urbanization transforms urban-rural landscape and profoundly affects ecological processes. To maintain a sustainable urbanization, two important issues of land-use need to be quantified: the comprehensive variation of urban-rural construction land and the specific models for consolidating these lands. The purpose of this study is to develop a framework to assess the change of urban-rural construction land and build a decision-support system for consolidating these lands. Four sub-layers were first built in the assessment framework, including the characteristic layer, the coordination layer, the potential layer and the urgency layer. Each layer encompassed specific indices for evaluating the change of urban-rural construction land in different aspects. The entropy method was then applied to the data resources from Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper) images, statistical data and overall land-use and land consolidation planning of Nantong city in coastal China to allocate weightings to the indices in each sub-layer. Finally, the decision-support system was built based on the assessment results and the degree of importance for consolidating urban and rural construction land, respectively. The results of our study show an overall investigation and quantitative description of the change of urban-rural construction land and provide an effective framework for land consolidation and land use management.

Highlights

Rapid land conversion for non-agricultural use has become the main feature of urbanization inChina [1,2]
The context of each influence factor is represented by the following four critical questions regarding land use change and Land Consolidation (LC); (1) What are the spatial characteristics of land fragmentation? (2) Is the statement of the utilization of urban-rural construction land in a coordinated relationship? (3) How much potential is there for consolidating urban-rural construction land? (4) How urgently does the place need to consolidate its urban-rural construction land? These questions are addressed by their respective four sub-layers of the assessment framework; the characteristic layer, the coordination layer, the potential layer, and the urgency layer, each of which encompasses specific indices as follows
Based on the data resources and results of data processing in Section 2.2, the weighting allocation in each sub-layer is determined with the entropy method and the assessment results are calculated for consolidating the urban-rural construction land in every county of Nantong city

Summary

Introduction

Rapid land conversion for non-agricultural use has become the main feature of urbanization inChina [1,2]. Rapid land conversion for non-agricultural use has become the main feature of urbanization in. The sprawl of the built-up area of megacities, the development of township and rural enterprises, the rapid construction of infrastructure and the emergence of hollowing villages have all aggravated the land conversion for non-agricultural use. The rapid growth of urban-rural land-use can be found in the construction land such as residential land, commercial land, industrial land and traffic land since the reform and opening-up of China in 1978 [3,4]. As China will realize its urban dream in the coming decades, it can generate other great human-dominated resettlement experiments and construction land changes in the future. Construction land-use transition due to urbanization will lead to big changes in production and living space for urban-rural China as well as serious eco-environmental issues. It is essential and necessary to assess the comprehensive variation of urban-rural construction land and to build specific models for consolidating these lands for sustainable development [6,7,8,9]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion