From “Traditional” to “Low carbon” urban land use: Evaluation and obstacle analysis

Abstract

Rapid urban expansion has depleted valued land resources along with urbanization, and land can be a critical limiting factor to a city’s development if not rationally utilized. Viewing from both the traditional and low carbon perspectives, this paper established an index system to evaluate the degree of land intensive use along with time series, and analyze factors that hinders its application. The results show that: (i) traditional phase of land use featured on high input, output, and energy consumption, which also coordinates with the economic trend in early stage; (ii) There exists an obvious turning point, indicating the traditional mode of intensive urban land use were getting refined continually; (iii) Carbon emission is a significant barrier, and factors concerned on tailpipe and waste water, as well as capita construction land also exhibited to hinder the intensive use of urban land in the later stage. Combining the level of intensive urban land use with the stage of a city’s development, this study enriched this field under low carbon ideas and provided implications for future urban development.