Urban land use effects of high-speed railway network in China: A spatial spillover perspective

Abstract

In the past decade, China’s high-speed railway (HSR) system has expanded rapidly and become the longest and most complex network in the world. To fully exploit the HSR dividend, many cities have constructed HSRs in new locations, triggering urban land use change, especially around the HSR stations. This study has used the difference-in-difference (DID) method to explore the effect of HSRs on urban land use using long-term nighttime light (NTL) data. The main conclusions are that the operation of HSRs has increased the intensity of urban land use by about 4.4%, with the land use effect of the “renewed HSR stations” being significantly higher than that of the “newly-built stations”; further the development of tertiary industry has promoted a siphoning effect, that is the spillover of HSR stations in large cities is strengthened relative to that for small cities. Based on these results, the study further analyzed the performance of areas with new HSR installations and the factors controlling the inter-city heterogeneities.