Multi-scale analysis of rural housing land transition under China's rapid urbanization: The case of Bohai Rim

Abstract

With the rural-to-urban migration under China's rapid urbanization, the Bohai Rim of China experienced dramatic rural housing land transition (RHLT) in the last decade, especially in terms of per capita rural housing land (PRHL). The objectives of this study are to (i) analyze the spatio-temporal patterns of RHLT, and (ii) detect the underlying driving forces and mechanism of RHLT in Bohai Rim during 2000–2010. To achieve these goals, we collected and rasterized high resolution Landsat TM data, socio-economic and physical environmental data for the Bohai Rim. Spatial econometric regression models at both grid scale and county scale were developed to examine the driving forces of RHLT in Bohai Rim. The results indicated that the distribution of rural housing land was characterized by vertical zonality, i.e., the proportion of rural housing land decreased gradually with the increase of elevation, and was more sensitive to slope than to elevation. The results of hot spots analysis showed that the spatial mismatch of rural housing land change and rural population migration made the regional differences of RHLT more remarkable, based on which four rural housing land consolidation regional types were differentiated. The authors argue that towns are effective hubs for linking the urban system and rural system, and it is better to get the farmers to migrate to towns instead of big cities in the process of pushing forward China's new-type urbanization in the future. For this, it is necessary to further improve related system and institution. Only by this way can the relationship between out-migrated farmers and rural housing land be orderly and completely removed, so as to smoothly pushing forward rural housing land consolidation.