Abstract
Urban land use/cover and efficiency are important indicators of the degree of urbanization. However, research about comparing their changes at the megaregion level is relatively rare. In this study, we depicted the differences and inequalities of urban land and efficiency among megaregions in China using China’s Land Use/cover Dataset (CLUD) and China’s Urban Land Use/cover Dataset (CLUD-Urban). Furthermore, we analyzed regional inequality using the Theil index. The results indicated that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Great Bay Area had the highest proportion of urban land (8.03%), while the Chengdu-Chongqing Megaregion had the highest proportion of developed land (64.70%). The proportion of urban impervious surface area was highest in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Great Bay Area (75.16%) and lowest in the Chengdu-Chongqing Megaregion (67.19%). Furthermore, the highest urban expansion occurred in the Yangtze River Delta (260.52 km2/a), and the fastest period was 2000–2010 (298.19 km2/a). The decreasing Theil index values for the urban population and economic density were 0.305 and 1.748, respectively, in 1980–2015. This study depicted the development trajectory of different megaregions, and will expect to provide a valuable insight and new knowledge on reasonable urban growth modes and sustainable goals in urban planning and management.
Highlights
Numerous studies characterize urban land changes and their ecological effects in different regions
Five major megaregions were selected at the national level for analysis (Table 1, Figure 1), including the Beijing (Jing)-Tianjin (Jin)-Hebei (Ji) Megaregion (JJJ), Yangtze River Delta Megaregion (YRD), Guangdong (Yue)-Hong Kong (Gang)-Macao (Ao) Great Bay Area (YGA), Middle Yangtze River Megaregion (MYR) and Chengdu (Cheng)-Chongqing (Yu) Megaregion (CY)
The degrees of artificial construction intensity are shown as the Urban area percentage (UAP), developed land percentage (DAP) and Impervious surface area percentage (ISP) (Figures 3 and 4)
Summary
Numerous studies characterize urban land changes and their ecological effects in different regions. Numerous studies have been conducted on urban land characterization, such as urban area [25], urban expansion [26,27], urban land landscape patterns [28,29,30], urban land density [31], urban internal structure [32,33,34] and urban land efficiency [35,36,37]. The population and economic production relative to the unit area of the city can reflect the differences in urban land use efficiency. These studies generally depict urban megaregions using indexes in only one respect. This study performed a comparative analysis of changes in urban land use/cover and efficiency in megaregions in China from 1980 to 2015. This study depicted the differences and inequalities among different megaregions of China, which may help implement the National New-Type Urbanization Plan in China [48,49] and is critical to achieving sustainable urban development [50,51]
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