Land market forces and government's role in sprawl

Abstract

Abstract While urban sprawl is a controversial topic among researchers, the majority of planners have expressed concerns about sprawl's environmental and social costs, and recommended policies for sprawl control. This research analyzes urban sprawl in China through a comparative approach, comparing the pattern and driving forces of sprawl in China to those of the US. It identifies main factors contributing to sprawl in China: the land market, local government's willingness to lease land as the result of new tax revenue regulations, and the decentralization process after China's economic reforms. Facing an enormous loss of cultivated land in the last decade, the central government has put a control policy in place in recent years. However, the policy has shown limited success. This paper finds that it is the presence of interest groups within the public sector that makes government consensus over sprawl hard to reach, which aggravates the sprawl problem.