Evaluating the effectiveness of sustainable urban land use in China from the perspective of sustainable urbanization

Abstract

The Sustainable Urban Land Use Policy is a critical component of sustainable land use in China, aiming to improve the urban land use efficiency, increase land output, protect the land ecological environment and realize the sustainable utilization of urban land resources. As part of the strategy for sustainable urbanization, the Sustainable Urban Land Use Policy has been implemented in some cities for years. To evaluate the effectiveness and reveal the future direction of development of this policy, it is essential to analyze this policy in the framework of sustainable urbanization. It is possibly a reliable measure to evaluate the effectiveness of this policy by assessing the contribution of sustainable urban land use policies to sustainable urbanization strategies and the trend of contribution over time. This paper measured the degree of sustainable urbanization and sustainable urban land use with necessary Control Variables and Instrument Variables using panel data of 31 provincial capital cities from 2000 to 2008 and 2009 to 2014. The regression results showed that the Sustainable Urban Land Use Policy had a significant positive effect on China's sustainable urbanization and the effectiveness improved after 2008. From the aspect the mechanism, the contribution of this policy to sustainable urbanization was to promote economic growth, thereby, to improve the social welfare. In contrast, the role of promoting urban development potential and the decreasing urban resource consumption was not so significant. Therefore, while maintaining the existing achievements through macro-control, reducing resource consumption, increase land use intensity, improve urban development potential are the further goals of land use policy in the future.