Examining the Driving Factors Causing Rapid Urban Expansion in China: An Analysis Based on GlobeLand30 Data

Abstract

A large number of studies have dealt with the driven forces of land expansion, in which the remote sensing data and statistical data are most commonly used. The recent progress based on the statistical data have not been fully tested and discussed by the remote sensing data, and the remote sensing data used in the previous studies are usually interpreted within certain areas which is not convenient for global comparison. In this paper, the 30-m GlobalLand Cover Dataset (GlobeLand30) and socioeconomic data from 2000 to 2010 are adopted to investigate the factors driving impervious surface expansion in China based on a multilevel regression model. The GlobeLand30 provides a world-wide data framework which has a sound basis for regional comparison research. The variables are selected according to the existing research. Most, but not all, results are consistent with the previous studies when using impervious surface data of GlobeLand30. The main findings are: (1) the market demand caused by economic development, such as the increase in GDP from 2000 to 2010, plays a positive role in the expansion of developed land; (2) the land supply, as reflected by the ratio of the total of land transfer fees to fiscal revenue, also has a positive effect on the increase in impervious surfaces; (3) the percentage of the increase by private workers to the increase in total workers and certain other frequently-used variables are not relevant after controlling for land demand-and supply-related variables; and (4) the growth in impervious surfaces is related to the amount of the cultivated land, which implies the necessity for a more stringent farmland protection policy. Considering the need to compare across regions, we suggest that GlobeLand30 should be used for more studies to better understand the driving forces of land expansion.

Spatial Econometric Analysis of the Relationship between Urban Land and Regional Economic Development in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Coordinated Development Region

“…Increased urbanization means the migration of people from rural areas to cities, which in turn requires more land to accommodate these growing populations. Average wages or income have a positive impact on the scale of urban land, which is consistent with previous research results [36,37,[70][71][72]. High-income areas will need to build more houses, shopping centers and public facilities, which will use more land.…”

“…In order to compare these results with scholars' conclusions, the positive or negative effects of explanatory variables on urban land were firstly analyzed without distinguishing between direct effects and spatial spillover effects. GDP in the secondary/tertiary sector has a positive impact on urban land scale, which is consistent with previous research results [15,21,28,36,42]. GDP is an important indicator of the governance ability of local governments, which can obtain huge benefits from the conversion of agricultural land to urban land [21].…”

“…In terms of direct effect contribution, the economy, total population and urbanization rate are the main influencing factors on the urban land scale in the research area, which is similar to previous research results [15,21,28,36,42]. The difference is that the three variables have different degrees of contribution.…”

“…Natural factors are mainly topographic conditions, such as elevation and slope [21,24,28,[33][34][35], that restrict urban land development. Socioeconomic factors include population [21,[34][35][36][37][38], GDP [34,[36][37][38][39], urbanization rate [40,41], fixed-asset investment [34,38,42], foreign direct investment [36,43], and urban wages or disposable income [33,34,36,39,42]. Infrastructure factors are mainly traffic conditions [38,42].…”

Does Financial Excess Support Land Urbanization—An Empirical Study of Cities in China

“…It also concluded that the increase of financial support was to promote rather than restrain the urbanization [19]. Liao verified that the continuous growth of China's GDP has promoted the construction of land urbanization based on the data of GlobeLand3 during 2000-2010 [20]. Cheng pointed out that land urbanization would develop fast with economic development, which was conducive to improving the residents' income and consumption ability, as well as stimulating the demand for residents, commercial and public land construction, and further promoting the urbanization process [21].…”