Abstract
Since its economic reform and opening-up, China has undergone unprecedented urbanization, where massive areas of rural land have been converted into urban use. Urban land development plays an important role in dynamic urban economic development. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of urban land development and its mechanisms in China. We conceptualized the mechanism of urban land development from multiple perspectives based on a case study in Jiangsu Province. We employed the methods of global and local spatial auto-correlation detection and spatial lag model to analyze the provincial land use conveyance and survey data from 2004 to 2008 and 2009 to 2012 to understand the dynamics of urban land development. The results show that urban land development varies significantly across different time periods, spatial scales, and regions in Jiangsu. Higher absolute urban land development mainly occurred in Sunan, expanding to Subei and Suzhong, while faster development occurred mainly in Subei, where the initial bases were lower but had strong economic growth potential. The regression analysis shows that market activities and administrative levels had played a more critical role in driving urban land development, which suggests that rapid urban land development has institutional and market foundations. Urban land development was not only a consequence of economic development but also a strategy of local governments to stimulate and govern the urban economy. This study enriches the literature on urban dynamics by providing an institutional understanding of rapid urban land development in a transitional economy.
Highlights
The launch of economic reforms in China in the late 1970s has given rise to unprecedented urbanization
This study built a ground-specific conceptual framework to understand the dynamics of urban development in China and analyze the spatio-temporal patterns and its driving factors in the process of China’s economic transition
Based on the official land use conveyance data from 2004 to 2012, we explored the patterns of urban land development at different spatial scales and argued that urban land development in Jiangsu Province was driven by the interaction of four factors: land demand, land supply, spill-over effects, and the natural environment
Summary
The launch of economic reforms in China in the late 1970s has given rise to unprecedented urbanization. Urban land expansion in China has resulted from industrialization, land commodification, and infrastructure development in the context of rapid economic growth [1,10,11]. Physical factors such as geology, geomorphology, elevation, and slope restrict urban land development [12] and changes in social and economic conditions play a decisive role in land use change and urban land growth [13,14]. Liu et al showed that urban land development in China was largely driven by demographic changes, economic growth, foreign investment, and changes in land use policies and regulations [18]. Jiang et al reported on the relative importance of urban land rent, urban wages, FDI in urban land development and loss of agricultural land in China [19]
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